Australian Country Towns

 

Balaklava, SA

In my younger life I used to travel regularly by road between Australia’s capital cities. I never had any interest in stopping in any country towns along the way. My young arrogant self assumed there was nothing or nobody in these towns that would be of interest to me. I would rush through them to get to the next big city as quickly as possible. I was usually planning to see friends in these cities and these visits would typically involve live music, drugs, alcohol, and long stimulating conversations.

I, and my friends were typically educated – often to university level, intelligent, articulate and often left-leaning politically. We called people who were conservative – perhaps right-wing voters and who did not take drugs – ‘straight’. This was not just a descriptive tag – it was also a derogatory slur. It was assumed that we had little in common with such people and there’d be little point in spending time with them. And it was assumed that country towns would be full of such people. And I think too there might have been a feeling of superiority: we thought ourselves better than them.

In the 1970s there was a significant divide between urban and rural Australia. There is still a divide, but it is no longer a vast chasm. As a traveller in the 70s for example you wouldn’t find a café with decent food or coffee in the towns along the highway. There would be the roadhouse with pies, pasties and chips and not much else. Country towns were for filling up with fuel, bad food, and perhaps a short walk to stretch the legs.

As I grew older (and perhaps smarter) changes were afoot in rural Australia. Increasingly a more engaged and socially aware cohort took up residence in country towns. Food outlets with decent food and coffee started to appear alongside the trusty roadhouses. Art and craft shops proliferated and served as small galleries to display local goods and art works. Some towns like Kimba in South Australia put more effort into making their towns destinations in their own right rather than just transit locations. Accommodations improved and provided more choice than just  the bog-standard hotel or motel.

The outward appearance of towns became more interesting. Older buildings with possible heritage appeal were restored, plants appeared on footpaths, statues, works of art, and information boards became more prominent and were more intent on conveying the town’s story. There was more focus on offering meaningful distractions to coax the traveller to stay a while. Larger towns had cinemas or theatres suitable for live performances.

And the people started to look different. Country towns began to have some residents who looked as if they could fit right in in places like St Kilda or Paddington. They started to look like places where someone used to city life could feel quite at home and find people there who they could identify with. The gaping chasm between city and country life was closing.

Then some smart person hit upon the idea of silo art! Many Australian towns are dominated by these very tall concrete towers that store grain. It turns out that the surfaces of these vast structures make ideal canvases for telling a story in pictures. So, in small towns like Coonalpyn between Adelaide and Melbourne, for the first time ever tourists would stop to view the silo art and maybe have a coffee or lunch at the café that sprang up across the road from the silos. As other towns jumped on the same bandwagon the concept of Silo Art trails was born, where one could now visit a chain of towns in reasonable proximity and view all the different types of silo art available.

The arrival of the COVID-19 virus was a further step towards the gentrification of Australia’s country towns. As people were encouraged to keep their social distance from others many quickly realized that the best place to do this was in country towns. Together with the technology that made working from home an option for more and more of the workforce, many urban dwellers upped sticks and relocated to the country.

I don’t know if rural people feel any resentment towards these city interlopers, but the net result of these incremental changes over the last 5 decades and this more sudden COVID induced population transfer means that for me country towns are now far more worth a visit. I don’t feel they’ve lost their soul or too much of their rustic character, and they have become places where  I no longer feel like an alien when I walk down the main street. I did once.

I acknowledge that this in part may be because of my youthful insecurities, and a somewhat biased blindness towards country life that lessened as I grew older. Perhaps country towns always had these attractions (theatre, food, culture etc) and I just never stayed long enough to notice.

The Ugly One

Famous Last Words Theatre
Slingsby’s Hall of Possibility

Fri 9 May, 2025

Staging a play called The Ugly One in this sensitive age when you may no longer call a spade a spade seems a little provocative.  It must be some kind of metaphor surely? Well yes and no – as we shall see.

Entering Slingsby’s Hall of Possibility is a treat in itself. It was good to be there early and soak up the atmosphere of a space that could indeed make many things possible. Four vertical lighting strips shone on the performance space and left enough ambient light for your eyes to roam around the intriguing space.

The cast of four each make their separate entrance down a tall stairway. Three of them will take on multiple roles but the ugly one, Lette, plays himself throughout. The grandest entrance is reserved for Lette’s boss, Scheffler, who strolls down the stairs like the belle of the ball.

Between her, Lette’s wife, Fanny, and Karlmann, his assistant, they need to address the delicate issue of telling Lette that he will not be presenting his company’s latest breakthrough at an upcoming convention because his face is a liability. That is, he is extremely unattractive.

It’s excruciating to witness as everyone squirms around this unfortunate reality but eventually the truth is out and Lette immediately insists on undergoing reconstruction surgery. Which as it turns out is fabulously successful and unleashes a chain of events that have you questioning who here is really the ugly one and other relevant questions about identity – how important is it that we look good? Or at least, feel like we look good? If you had a ‘better face’ would you be a different, or better person? Do others treat good looking people better? Are good looking people more likely to be more successful in life?

Rather than directly confront them these serious existential questions are inferred in the mayhem that follows Lette’s miraculous surgery. There’s plenty of humour embedded in the dialogue and a wonderful irony in the fact that the players themselves don’t realise how shallow they’ve become. Virginia Blackwell is near perfect as the supercilious boss and unscrupulous surgeon floating around on an air of superiority completely oblivious to things like ethics and feelings.   James Starbuck does a great job of playing a Lette who is initially hooked on the idea of being beautiful but undergoes something of a redemption as he comes to realise there may be other more important things in life. And his sexy presentation on connector plugs was hilarious!

The play skips along at a good pace. I really enjoyed the simulated surgery scenes. They managed to be brutal, humorous, artistic and elegant all at once. Just one example of some clever direction from James Watson.

So yes – ugly can be seen as a metaphor here, and that it’s not just something we see on the outside of a person. And while some may be gorgeous to look at, perhaps the old cliché is true that beauty really is only skin deep.

A fine piece of thoughtful, entertaining theatre in a great venue.   

This review also published in The Clothesline.

 

Notes from New Caledonia and Vanuatu (November 2015)

Noumea

Travel: the waiting game. Noumea. Hotel Nouvata. Lobby. 40 minutes till shuttle bus for airport arrives. Heading to Vanuatu. Should already be there. Chanced to look at my email before boarding shuttle for early morning flight. Got up at 5:00 AM for this purpose! Only to read the flight had been cancelled. Only the second time this has happened to me over the years so I consider myself lucky.

Wasn't so bad really. I went back to bed for a couple of hours and subsequently had a nice walk around Noumea. That was my plan for Port Vila today but it will be dark when I get there now. Quite a fascinating blast to be here in Noumea. One can live a life so ignorant of things that are just so close. Just three hours flying time from Sydney and you’re in the French Pacific. English very much a second language here but everyone speaks it well enough. Just 44% of the population of New Caledonia are descended from the Kanakas - all of whom came here from Vanuatu. The remainder are French, or the progeny of French plus locals:  ‘burgers’ as they are called it Sri Lanka. People of mixed blood. Noticeably missing are the big-framed, overweight people found on other Pacific nations. I assume the French influence has been significant here and that equals education which equals better diet/exercise which equals a beautiful streamline version of Pacific people. Curious to see where Vanuatu fits in the fat/ weight scale.

So out here, just a short hop away from Australia is this pretty, French speaking version of the Gold Coast. Actually it's nicer than the Gold Coast, and though the local culture has been well and truly relegated to second place under the French elite, there is at least a local culture and things seem harmonious. (Note: I learned later this was often far from the truth.) 

I wonder if the men beat their wives and partners here? And what of Islamism? Honestly out here it's like jihads, terrorism, the Taliban etc don't exist. Travelling tends to remove you from the news cycle, and I’d need to turn on a TV or read a newspaper or monitor news feed to hear about the Islamists and I'm tired of them ….

…… wait there's more. New flight to Vanuatu went ahead as scheduled, but no driver at the airport to get me. Air Vanuatu have lost one of its ATR aircraft to a broken engine. So all their scheduling has been thrown into chaos - all of their flights have been rescheduled, handed over to Aircailin, or cancelled. My flight today to Luganville has been rescheduled to two hours earlier. I rang Emmanuel in Luganville this morning and he said he would pass on the new details to his son. Alas he didn't show up at pick-up time at the hotel so I think I'll ditch his services from now on. I thought the family connection was a nice touch but it's already an unreliable connection or maybe I just didn't give him enough Vanuatu time?

Port Vila

I had a lovely morning wandering around Port Vila. And it was with great relief that I woke up this morning able to do such things. There was an episode in the middle of the night that sent me scurrying to the toilet a few times. No pain - just dread that it might be the start of several days of inconvenience but when I woke all was back to normal. Alleluia! Think it may have been the fish or mashed potato (made with milk) but who knows? The fish was wahu and I loved it - juicy and tasty.

Port Vila Airport

So here I wait (and write) once more at the Port Vila domestic airport. Very casual. Laid back. Airport officials in thongs and high viz jackets. No fans turning but I've found a spot at the end of the building with an open view of the terminal, and the hint of a breeze every now and then. Quite pleasant and entertaining really. Just 45 or so minutes to kill then to Luganville on Espiritu Santo where the whole reason for my being here will suddenly be real. Conversations tonight I assume with Emmanuel about how we run the workshop. I'm looking forward to his input to help and finalise the fine detail for the week. There's still a few blanks.

And ….. I have seen enough of ni-Vanuatu to know the workshop will be slower than I thought. (I'm an expert after 24 hours!) There is a cultural difference - that's no surprise -  but the surprise is often in the nature of the cultural difference. I'm still working on it but they don't appear to process information the same way I might. And it is slower, but that's just because they're thinking something other than about the words I'm speaking! It's fascinating. It’ll take me all week to figure it out I'm sure. As well as everything else we're supposed to achieve.

 

Housework: The Hard Work of Democracy

CC image courtesy of Nigel Paine

Housework
Dunstan Playhouse
State Theatre Company
Tue 11 Feb, 2025

It was a little unnerving to watch a show trashing the inner workings of democracy just as the world’s foremost democratic state across the Pacific is busy dismantling theirs. The timing is exquisite.

So too is the timing of the pacy dialogue between the six cast members of Housework. Set changes are marked by a loud military style drum beat and a ticking clock. The pressure is relentless and the need to get your message out quickly is paramount. When not firing messages at each other MPs and their staffers are racing down the corridors of power to the next confrontation.

A wonderfully cold, hard, and grand set design facilitates these multiple movements and adds a gravitas that belies the petty intentions of the building’s inhabitants. One may enter politics with grand delusions about making the world a better place but any optimism is quickly worn down by a realistic pragmatism. Cynicism trumps naivete as negotiations become a process of conniving, backstabbing, tit-for-tat I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine. This is the sad, but at the same time hilariously funny, source of humour for plays like Housework.

We’ve seen it before in TV shows like Yes Minister and Utopia – political absurdity is a rich vein of humour that never seems to tire, but at some point, beyond the laughs, one wonders whether this kind of democracy is very productive. It’s convoluted, slow going, and spits out professional and personal casualties.

Shannon Rush’s smart direction and an innovative set manages to convey the impression that there are crowds of people in the house: MPs, staffers, ministers, protesters, cleaners – all buzzing about taking care of business.

Emily Taheny is simply wonderful as the Chief of Staff for a federal MP as she controls all movements and narratives around her boss with perfect grasp of tone and manner. She pays attention to every little detail as a senior staffer, and consummate performer. She’s a joy to watch. Franca Lafosse is excellent as the hapless junior staffer and her excitement at being at the coalface of politics is endearing and infectious. She quickly learns the game – perhaps too quickly – and pays the price for crossing boundaries.

Susie Youssef as the MP shows great comic timing with several funny one-liners, and it was a nice touch to have Sunitra Martinelli play the part of both cleaner and Prime Minister. After all, someone has to “clean up all this shit”!

Despite all the wheeling and dealing, the blame and accusations, the conniving and backstabbing, the characters seem ultimately to care for each other somewhere. There appears to be tacit recognition that they are trapped in a system that brings out the worst in people and underneath it all that they might actually have some respect for each other.

And what’s it all for ultimately? The love of democracy? The good of the country? To make people’s lives better? The final scene provides the answer with brilliant simplicity!

Great theatre –  superbly functional set, humour in spades, and a witty and insightful play perfectly executed by a first rate cast who didn’t miss a beat.

(This review also published on The Clothesline.)

Ships and Norway

 

The first time I ever heard of the country Norway was when I was a young child in Port Lincoln perhaps 8-9 years old. We lived in a house that overlooked Port Lincoln harbour and we could see all the ships that came and went. My father was the local top cop and because of his high profile in the town he often got to meet the captains of the visiting ships that came to port. So there was an occasion when this ship called the Nidar came to Port Lincoln and I learned that it was from Norway. This became significant because for the first time, through Dad's connections with Captain Larssen of the Nidar, we were able to go on board and have dinner and we were given a tour of the ship. As you can imagine it was quite a special occasion and something I've never forgotten. In addition every time the Nidar came to port Lincoln it would blow its horn three times when it came into port and again three times when it left. Captain Larssen said this was his way of saying hello and goodbye to us when they came and went so we felt quite special when we heard that loud barp barp barp noise across the harbour rising up to the hill where we lived. It was Captain Larssen sending us greetings.

So my first memory of Norway was to do with ships.  Fast forward 60 years and I'm finally in Norway. I'm in the waiting room of the Roros railway station. I'd been walking around for a while and it was pretty cold so I thought I'd just go in there and take a break. I figured that it would be  warm and I could defrost before continuing my walk. This really friendly guy (see photo above)  was in there with a companion having a few beers in the corner of the waiting room and offered me a drink. I declined the drink but lingered to have a chat and he was really friendly. He spoke excellent English as many Norwegians do and he told me how he had first heard about Australia from his father. His father was a sailor or seaman and had travelled the world on ships in the Merchant Navy and said that the best place he ever went, and the best people he ever met were Australian and this guy in the waiting room, his son, was telling me this story and how because of what his father had told him, he'd always wanted to go to Australia and was very pleased to meet me there in the waiting room of Roros railway station! I said well you don't look like you're that old so you've got plenty of life left - maybe you could go to Australia and see it for yourself and he held up his beer, looked at me with a great big smile and said, “I drank all my money.” So a sad story in a nice way;  he was obviously a drinker and perhaps a heavy drinker - it was about 1:00 in the afternoon and he obviously already had a few and he said that was a pretty regular occurrence where they go to that waiting room at the station and have a few drinks.  But we both kind of realised that we shared a connection.  My first experience and my first thought of the country of Norway was associated with ships and his first introduction to Australia was also through ships and people sailing the world. It was just a really nice interlude, not quite magical, but a very warm moment where it felt very nice to be in Norway. I felt welcome.

Americana

Pokey La Farge

1) TRUMP 

Trump is back. Once again America has turned its back on decency, respect, and empathy and elected a morally bankrupt oligarch. It feels like a huge backward step in terms of the evolution of civil society. Furthermore, as someone else wrote, I cannot respect anyone who voted for this man. But it hurts to see a culture, a country that in so many ways was such a beacon in our lives sell its soul to the devil. Ironically so, as it is the religious right that helped propel Trump to power a second time.

2)      RIP GARTH HUDSON

A few days ago the final surviving member of The Band, Garth Hudson, passed away. Not just any band, THE Band. The Band who made history with Music from Big Pink. The band that backed Bob Dylan.  A band that according to many pundits changed everything. Eric Clapton was playing in supergroup Blind Faith when he first heard The Band and says he immediately knew he had to leave the band and do something better, more significant.

As we so often hear these days, God is calling the musicians of our generation home. But the passing of Garth Hudson feels like a milestone. The Band are the first of the significant 70s bands that have all passed away. All five members have left this earth. They have all played their Last Waltz. It feels quite numbing. Just another indicator that my generation is moving on. And it feels like just a taste of what it might be like to live long enough to see most of your friends move on before you.

The Band crossed many musical frontiers and accordingly their potential appeal was vast. They were part country, part bluegrass, part folk, part rock, part blues, part soul with even a sprinkling of jazz - largely due to the musical wizardry of Garth Hudson. So wide was their catchment pool they are hailed as having invented a new genre: Americana.

Levon Helm was the first singing drummer I’d ever seen and I marvelled at his ability to keep time and sing complex melodies. He led the vocals on what became an anthem of a generation – The Weight. The Band certainly wrote plenty of their own material but also adapted traditional songs like Long Black Veil for a modern audience. In songs like The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down they used events from American history to tell musical stories. Everything they did was different and hard to categorise, and frequently featured quirky lyrics: “Up on Cripple Creek she sends me”,  “I pulled in to Nazareth, feelin’ bout half past dead”.

Establishing a new genre is no mean feat. This, and the fact that their musical output was wide and varied, with several songs that are already considered classics (eg add Chest Fever to the abovementioned), the fact that they hooked their wagon to the Dylan phenomenon, and the fact they had the temerity to call themselves THE Band, should ensure their place in modern musical history will be acknowledged well into the future.

3)     A COMPLETE UNKNOWN        

I really enjoyed this fine movie about the life of Bob Dylan. It was also an emotionally exhausting experience that laid bare my conflicting sentiments about America. A Complete Unknown focuses on so many things that are great about America; so many things that have been part of our cultural DNA. So many things that I love and are entwined in my own identity: Woody Guthrie, Peter Seeger, folk songs. Telling stories of the people, defending the rights of the dispossessed, singing songs of justice.  And I felt anger growing inside me when I thought about the 74 million Americans that just re-elected Trump and in one foul swoop swept aside that America. The America of romance, dreams, and music. Trump has killed off Americana – at least for the time being.

There are stunning moments in A Complete Unknown that are deeply moving. One thing it does really well is make clear that these Dylan songs that have become anthems were all once played for the very first time. Joan Baez hears Blowin’ in the Wind the very first time in the kitchen of her flat and the look on her face shows that something amazing has just been born. The first time Dylan plays The Times They Are A-Changing at Newport Folk Festival people backstage similarly knew they were witnessing a pivotal moment in history. One of the greatest songs ever written was being born in front of them. It was profoundly moving and it was one of several times throughout this movie that the tears flowed.

Dylan really was remarkable. He really was somehow able to be the spokesperson of a time, of a generation. He captured that spirit and the dawning aspirations of millions and put them into spine-chilling words. Almost other-worldly.

It was an amazing time to be alive. My generation has seen so much transformational change. And until 2016 those changes felt like they were part of a world moving inexorably forward to a better place. But Trump’s re-election has once again shattered that myth. And maybe that’s all it was – a myth and not at all based in any reality. Maybe four years will pass, and the good ship America will right itself, and the world can move forward again. But I’m not at all hopeful. It might be that we need another Complete Unknown

 

 

Music and Me

 A friend asked me whether I'd ever told my friends about a song I wrote about a friend who got killed in a car accident. (See The Ballad of Jo Moore.) My reply:

Great questions about my Jo Moore song and whether I have told my friends about it. No, I haven’t and now realise that is quite strange. I haven’t thought about this much over the years but this is why.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fabulaires

In my late teens/early 20’s many people I knew played musical instruments. Many of them went on to play music for a living and became quite well known. The people who were in the band with Jo are in that category. I was playing music and writing songs quietly on the side while pursuing my studies, travelling a lot, and eventually working as a teacher in schools. Most of the people I knew who were friends of Jo were all in the music business and they were much more accomplished musicians than I was so I always felt shy about promoting my own music. I developed my ‘musical world’ with an entirely group of people that I felt more comfortable with. With a group of people who wouldn’t compare me with my well known friends who were in bands.

It's interesting to reconsider all this now. Looking back now I actually think I was pretty good – even back then in 1980 when I wrote that song for Jo. Some time much later in life I started to think that I was probably good enough to ‘make it’ in music and carve out a successful living. But I didn’t believe it; I didn’t have the confidence or as someone once said I didn’t have the drive or self-belief to make it as a musician. I realise now that it was also a protective behaviour. If I didn’t try and make it with music I wouldn’t be let down or disappointed so I was happy to tell myself I wasn’t good enough! As I got older, got married and had children I started to think differently. I started to believe I was good enough, but by then it was too late to really try so there was no chance of disappointment!

So you see my relationship with music has always been a strange one. Deep down I’ve always wanted to be a musician, but never really believed It was possible, so I never poured my energy into it. I don’t regret the choices I made. I’m happy now to be still playing music in various forms and that people who hear me play seem to like it.

So the short answer to your question is back them I didn’t think the song was good enough and I was too embarrassed to play it to people I knew. 

Online Teaching - the Very Early Days

 EFI – English for Internet

In its early days study.com went by the name English for Internet (EFI). I first discovered the site sometime early in 1997 when I was searching for ESL materials to use with my classroom based ESL groups in Adelaide, Australia. I noted that EFI was calling for ESL/EFL teachers to take classes online on a volunteer basis. As I knew little about how to teach online at that time and I saw it as a potentially rewarding professional development opportunity. I decided to take the plunge and put my name forward. David Winet responded and asked if I would be interested in taking an online listening class as my first assignment.

Visiting David in Berkeley 2003

If I knew little about online teaching, I knew even less about how to use audio on the Internet. However, David was persuasive and I agreed to try it. What followed was an exciting time of exploration of how to produce listening materials. Armed with little knowledge, but just enough to be dangerous, I frequently pestered David with questions about how to master the intricacies of Real Audio. Real Audio was the most used audio software of the time, and with David’s infinite patience, I managed to get some basic materials ready for student use in June, 1997. They included information about how to use Real Player, and Pure Voice (a voice attachment tool that worked with the Eudora email client, and a selection of links to sites that offered various listening exercises. This very first page can be viewed at http://michaelcoghlan.net/TOEFLHOME.htm As the URL suggests, the exercises were designed to assist students who wanted to practice their listening skills in preparation for the international TOEFL test that enabled entry into university. Actual lesson assignments can be viewed at http://michaelcoghlan.net/toefllessonsplan.htm

The classes were small with typically 6-8 students. Classes were offered from memory in blocks of five weeks. All student activity was asynchronous, with the option of attending a live synchronous session once a week on a Sunday at The Palace, a forerunner of the later more sophisticated 3D virtual worlds. In fact The Palace was a 2D virtual world where participants were represented by avatars who could move around a 2d space and where text chat would appear in chat bubbles next to your avatar. In truth, most of the interaction in these early Palace sessions had little to do with class or study content. They tended to be general and very social chat sessions where students could practice their written English skills, and form bonds with others in their class. From these early Palace experiences I learnt the enormous value of allowing students social time to connect with their teacher and other students to form a sense of community. The later work of Gilly Salmon and her seminal work on emoderation bore this out. (http://www.gillysalmon.com/five-stage-model.html)

Some students would take the extra step to meet online with me in Yahoo Messenger, or ICQ – to my knowledge the earliest tools that enabled live synchronous conversation. These were usually one on one sessions where students could ask questions about the set listening exercises, or practice their conversation skills.

After more or less mastering the available tools for producing audio for listening exercises I moved on to taking a Reading and Writing class. The first version of these classes can be seen at http://www.michaelcoghlan.net/RWHOME.htm Note the predominance of text and the almost complete lack of images and video! This was absolutely typical of many websites at the time. To my credit though I did attempt to encourage students to contribute photographs to a class community page at http://michaelcoghlan.net/TOEFLClassinfo5.htm But that was a high level skill in those days and few managed to send through photographs for me to post.

As with the Listening classes, the Reading and Writing classes were held in five week blocks with most work done asynchronously, and again with the option of attending the weekly meeting at The Palace.

A significant spin-off of these EFI classes for me was that I began using the materials I developed, as basic as they were, with my students in my paid day job. I seem to remember too that occasionally some of my day students would show up at the Palace – my two work worlds were neatly coalescing.

Around this time I became aware that another EFI class taught by Vance Stevens was meeting weekly in the Palace just before my class. What started to happen over time is that Vance’s students would stay online to join my class so in effect the two classes blended into one and Vance and I would co-facilitate these combined sessions.  I’ll let Vance Stevens take up the story from here, as this is where and how the concept of the Webheads was born!

The Questions - Review

 

State Theatre Company
Space Theatre, Tue 30 July

The stage set for The Questions immediately catches your attention: bright, modern, urban, and obviously high above the ground. The adjoining band practice room, visually separated by just a thin set of Venetian blinds, suggests life lived at close quarters. Enter Chaya Ocampo singing a charming little ditty about dating being a digital shit show!

From the outset she is engaging and vivacious, and she’s excited about meeting her online date (Charles Wu) for the first time. It doesn’t begin well. Both Ocampo and Wu quickly realise they preferred the online version of the person in front of them and want out. Then comes the lockdown and there’s no escape. They have to deal with each other for a long time.

You can imagine the fear, angst, frustration and anger that accompany this realization. Things initially get very heated but over time they begin to accommodate each other’s presence with relative calm. Key to this connection are The Questions they agree to ask each other to wile away time and get to know each other. Curiously, effectively, some of the more personal questions are asked and answered in song adding a level of poignancy that rises above mere words.

Not once was I surprised or bothered by the characters breaking into song. In so many musicals the transition between spoken dialogue and song can feel blatantly contrived. Here the transition from dialogue to song felt natural and perfectly integrated into the fabric of the narrative.

And Ocampo and Wu are such fabulous singers. I especially enjoyed the warm tones of Wu’s lower register – really quite special – but the songs they sing together are sensational. A wonderful blend of emotion and harmony – often telling the story from opposite perspectives in the same song in a complex lyrical dance. Quite magnificent writing by Van Badham and Richard Wise, and delivered in near flawless fashion with conviction, compassion, and honesty.

Using the band next door as live accompaniment for the songs was a masterstroke, and the proximity of these inquisitive neighbours offers plenty of opportunity for comedy. Not only does The Questions look and sound great, but it is also very funny.

This really is an exceptional piece of theatre – a stunning set used so creatively, an entertaining story, and great music in the hands of two fine performers equally adept at acting and singing. A must see.

(This review also published on The Clothesline.)

From the archives: SUN RISING - The Songs That Made Memphis (Jun 2015)

 

Space Theatre, Thu 11 Jun

Sun records holds a prestigious place in the history of early American pop music, and the Sun Rising Band have put together a selection of mostly well-known hits recorded at the Memphis Recording Studios in the 1950s. I, and many in the audience I imagine, have read the story many times, heard all the songs, and watched documentaries of this period, But seeing it recreated live on stage was much more engaging and a great way to relive those exciting times.

Sam Phillips was the main man behind Sun Records and is credited with launching the careers of many musical luminaries – among them Howlin’ Wolf, Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins, Roy Orbison and Jerry Lee Lewis. Front man David Cosma narrated the stories behind the songs, and in an accidental touch of authenticity, plays a right handed guitar upside down (Some early blues players apparently did this because they didn’t know any better. I don’t know what David’s excuse is!).

Photos of all the early Sun recording stars were displayed on a screen behind the excellent band as they played their songs. Damon Smith on piano is a blues/boogie virtuoso, and Trent McKenzie is a treat to watch plucking away on his double bass. Local singer Cookie Baker provided an infectious cameo appearance to represent the female Sun stars.

Musically this show couldn’t be faulted. The band transformed relatively simple pieces of blues, pop and rock and roll into musical showcases. I wondered if the Sun singers back then had musicians of this calibre.

Towards the end the narrative was let slip and we didn’t get to hear what happened to Sam Phillips and Sun records in the long run and that was a shame. But by then most of the audience was too busy enjoying the music to notice – at least half the audience rose for a standing ovation at the close of a really enjoyable reliving of the roots of pop music.

Blackbird

 

Blackbird
Holden St Theatres
Wed 4 April 2024

A conversation with someone who sexually abused you when you were 12 years old is never going to be easy. Blackbird is a tense exploration of a past relationship between 40 year old Ray, and a 12 year old girl, Una.

Una is now 27 and she drops in unannounced on her abuser at his workplace. He’s shocked. And angry. Initially he just wants her out of there. But she will not go quietly. She is also sitting on a volcano of anger and frustration.

It’s not quite clear why she goes back there. She wants to know the truth certainly. She wants him to feel her pain. And slowly he starts to listen. Together they relive happy and traumatic events. There’s still a spark of some fatal attraction that neither of them quite know what to do with.

Was this just a case of sexual abuse or was there some real affection between them back then? Can they resolve the lingering feelings of guilt that apparently haunt them both?

Blackbird is not always easy to watch.  Dialogue frequently spirals into angry shouting matches that display raw emotion stronger than any words can express. You want them to resolve things – they do seem to care about each other deep down under the toxic mess that their relationship created.

This is not your typical presentation of a dominant older male screwing with the life of a young girl. It does appear to be more nuanced than that.  And we’re kept guessing till its surprising conclusion.

Marc Clement and Monika Lapka do a really good job of balancing Ray and Una’s fear and hatred of each other with their apparent desire to reconcile. Apparent because nothing in Blackbird is quite what it seems. The two major roles are quite demanding, and require moving along an emotional spectrum that is extreme, potentially violent, potentially loving, and then trying to make it all seem credible. In this they largely succeed.

What is abundantly clear is that relationships based on uneven power relationships have dire, long term consequences. This brave production deserves a wide audience.

Presented by Solus Productions
Directed by Tony Knight

This review also published on The Clothesline.

 

 

The Children - State Theatre Company - Review

 FEB 9 2024

In 2011 a nuclear power plant in Fukushima caused a radiation scare when its reactors were destroyed as a result of an earthquake and subsequent tsunami. British playwright Lucy Kirkwood has created a similar scenario in a small English town for her 2016 play, The Children.

Despite the background drama The Children gets off to a very low-key start with a commanding looking Tina Bursill standing in a kitchen that is obviously not her own. She plays the part of Rose, and she has let herself into the house of old acquaintances, Hazel (Genevieve Mooy) and Rob (Terence Crawford).

Things are a little tetchy between Hazel and Rose – they are clearly not great friends. When Rob appears a little later we find out why. On the surface The Children just seems to be about renewing social connections after decades apart. Sure there is talk of ‘an exclusion zone’, contaminated water, and intermittent power supply but these aspects of life are just woven into everyday conversations with little drama. It almost seems that life is pretty much normal. Perhaps the point here is the frog in boiling water principle: that people can get used to anything.

In any event Rose has returned with a grander plan. She is looking for older recruits to shoulder more responsibility and enable younger people to leave the area for a chance at a longer, healthier life away from a nuclear contaminated region.

This implausible course of action only has value if seen as allegorical. It would seem that Kirkwood is suggesting that it is incumbent upon older generations who have overseen the gradual destruction of much of the natural world to make amends before they exit the planet. They have a moral responsibility to bear the brunt of the damage and put themselves on the front line of the battle. Rose and Rob seem willing, but Hazel’s not so sure: “I come from a line of long-living women!”

The Children is effortlessly played by three veterans of stage and film, and as expected all three are totally convincing in their respective roles. Dialogue is crisp and witty, and dance and yoga scenes towards the end add visual clues about the complexity of their relationships.

The Children is an intriguing night out. It’s entertaining, and poses big questions without being didactic or too depressing. Quite charming really.

Paulina Lenoir: Puella Eterna

 

Paulina Lenoir: Puella Eterna

The Yurt at the Courtyard of Curiosities at the Migration Museum, Tue 12 Mar

Paulina Lenoir was busy preening herself in front of a mirror as the audience filed in. We were able to take in her extensive wardrobe and props collection draped around the stage and allow the music to get us in the mood for Puella Eterna – the Eternal Girl. All of this was brought to an abrupt halt by a welcome to country. It was an intrusion into an artistic process, the building of relationship between audience and performer, that was already underway.

Fortunately, it didn’t seem to bother Lenoir. She moved seemlessly into her strangely bewitching style and announces that she has big plans for the universe tonight! An endless striptease has the audience laughing along. Then, in a madcap slightly deranged way we travel her whole life with her.

She introduces her baby-self as a puppet – “I did not choose to be born” and requires audience assistance to communicate and eat in some classic slapstick. She progresses to the toddler stage and manages to move around and talk with more of the audience on her knees in quite endearing fashion. She soon grows up – quite literally!! But it’s a rapid ride and menopause is soon upon her and is the occasion of some of the strangest dance moves you’ll ever see!

She has many ploys for engaging the audience in her brief life – many in the audience get real roses – and she regularly checks in with her timekeeper to make sure she has enough time to get to the end of her life and die before the show’s over!! But it doesn’t quite end there ….

Lenoir’s clown is disarmingly ingenuous, and likes to appear as if she’s a bit of a duffer but one has this sneaking feeling that behind that innocent smile she is having the last laugh. But you’re not sure why. Or even if it’s true!

But therein lies the joy and mystery of it all. On the outside you’ll be smiling and laughing throughout; on the inside you may be asking questions that have no answers!

This review also posted on The Clothesline.

Irish Concert Songs Of Luke Kelly And The Dubliners With Dave Clark: A Lovely Way To Spend An Afternoon

 

Singing Gazebo Clarendon, Sun 23 Feb, 2020

One of the nicest places to play and listen to live music in South Australia in recent years was The Singing Gallery in McLaren Vale. It was an enchanting place to be for both musicians and audiences. The people behind this delightful place, Dave Clark and Kate Townsend, have moved on and created a scaled down version at The Singing Gazebo in Clarendon, and it has a similar welcoming charm.

Irish Concert Songs Of Luke Kelly And The Dubliners is a cross between a Celtic session at the local pub and a concert. Dave Clarke led us through songs that mostly everyone knew and we heartily sang along to the choruses of well-worn classics like The Wild Rover, Dirty Old Town, Whisky In The Jar, and Black Velvet Band. And likewise on a couple of Dave Clark originals – he was clearly playing among friends! He was accompanied by Kate on ukulele, piano, accordion and concertina, and Dave himself switched between guitar, bodhran, and banjo.

Special guest Jack Brennan provided delicious instrumental textures with Irish flute and the evocative Uilleann pipes, and added a couple of endearing stories to the afternoon’s narrative. Acoustic bass and fiddle completed the musical line-up.

Kate’s version of A Song For Ireland was a special moment – beautifully sung.

This was a remarkable event on several levels – it’s remarkable that there are so many people, Irish or not, dedicated to the singing and preserving of these folk classics; remarkable that Dave and Kate have managed to recreate another live music venue with the same spirit and warmth as The Singing Gallery; remarkable that they served every member of the 50 strong audience a free piece of cake (with cream)! Remarkable, too, that there is an implicit understanding between players and audience that such events are group efforts. This was not a performance as much as a celebration of community and the radiant joy of sharing songs in good company.

This is a lovely way to spend an afternoon.

This review also published on The Clothesline.

A Centennial Story of the Chinese Fiddle

 

Pilgrim Uniting Church, Sun 3 Mar.

That different cultures across the world have found their own solutions to life’s matters is a fascinating aspect of humanity. Cultures develop distinct ways of dressing, different foods, types of housing, and music. The sitar is the unmistakable sound of India; the Middle East gave us the oud. When you hear that haunting melancholy tone of the erhu you recognise it immediately as Chinese. The erhu is a two-stringed bowed instrument that has a small sound box at its base that is covered with python skin. And according to Wikipedia “its characteristic sound is produced through the vibration of the python skin by bowing.”

Silk Strings are an Adelaide based group of Chinese musicians whose mission is in part to make the music known as huquin more accessible.  The erhu, or Chinese fiddle – its central instrument – has been around for centuries. A Centennial Story of the Chinese Fiddle is designed to showcase the music of the erhu from the last one hundred years.

The program delivered nine pieces in chronological order as either solo pieces, or duets with erhu and piano in the beautiful Pilgrim Uniting Church. There’s something delicious about hearing traditional Chinese music in a Christian church. The atmosphere and acoustics are perfect for this kind of performance.

The earliest piece was from 1928, and like so much of Chinese nomenclature, it has one of those poetic titles intended to impart a lesson before a note is played – Birds Singing in a Desolate Mountain. A gorgeous folk song from China’s north-east was entitled The Crescent Moon at Three in the Morning. Galloping Battle Steeds sounded as it suggests. The sounds of galloping horses is a recurring motif in music from northern China and Mongolia, and is mimicked by interesting bowing techniques.

The final three pieces were more recent arrangements for erhu and piano involving some quite intense collaboration. One was an interpretation of a gypsy tune by a Spanish composer. The final two pieces in a more modern vein had the erhu sounding more like a violin, and therefore less Chinese.

It’s understandable that musicians would want to stretch themselves and branch out into fusion or more modern forms of their genre, but it may be at the cost of losing that distinctive sound that made older forms of the genre instantly recognisable, and perhaps revered.

Beautiful music exquisitely played in a near perfect setting.

This review also published on The Clothesline.

Sounds of the Hazara - Adelaide Fringe Music Review

[MUSIC/World Music ~ SA ~ ADELAIDE FRINGE PREMIERE]

Nexus Arts Venue, Sat 25 Feb, 2024.

The Hazara are one of the many ethnic groups that make up the population of Afghanistan. They in particular have been subject to harassment and violence since the return to power of the Taliban. There are approximately 40000 Hazara now living in Australia.

As Keith Preston told us in his introduction the Adelaide Fringe is slowly but surely becoming more representative of the diverse cultural make-up of our society – due in part it must be said, to the tireless efforts of people like Keith who strive to make it happen.

And so we gather at Nexus Arts to enjoy Hazara folks songs led by the humble, gracious Feroz Ansari on vocals and harmonium. Ansari is supported by fellow countryman Mehran Yawary on keyboards and electronic percussion,  well-known Adelaide musician Quentin Ayers on dobro and guitar, and Preston on santoor and bouzouki. It was a line-up that worked really well in the end. There were some issues with instrument balance earlier in the show where the harmonium and vocals were being dominated by the keyboard and percussion. The program does refer to ‘fusion styles’ – and it’s always a challenge to get the blend of traditional and modern instruments in the right balance. Once this was sorted the music quite rocked!

Most songs followed a similar pattern with a quieter vocal intro with harmonium, with other instruments joining in once the song was established. Some of the programmed percussion arrangements were wonderful – complex and catchy. Ansari’s vocals were right on the money – melodic and plaintive with that lovely central Asian/Middle Eastern style of vocal where the singer slides into and across notes that the Western pentatonic scale doesn’t feature. There were some lovely instrumental moments from Preston on santoor, and Ayers on guitars.

Ansari mentioned that the poetry of the original songs was very difficult to translate into English but it seemed that one way or another all the songs were about love.

It is sadly ironic that Australian audiences are now fortunate to have ethnic musicians of this calibre living amongst us who can participate in such events and enrich our cultural life. A really enjoyable performance of music from another world.

This review also published on The Clothesline.