Adored once too

Neither Megan nor I were in particularly good form to take on an Australian interpretation of a Shakespearean plot in Elizabethan English made more obscure by a limited cast playing multiple roles, but we attended Twelfth Night presented by Bell Shakespeare and enjoyed it well enough. “Adored once too” has little relevance here, other than that I was surprised by some delightful quotes. I shouldn’t have been because the stock quotation books are pretty much just Shakespeare and the Bible. This is comedy, so “But be not afraid of greatness: some men are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them” was pretty unexpected. It seems too serious for this context, but S littered his plays with changes from light to lofty. Some other clever observations were delightful, like “Love sought is good, but giv'n unsought is better” or the famed “If music be the food of love, play on”, but then this is a romantic comedy so not so out of place. On the other hand “Many a good hanging prevents a bad marriage” was dark if revelatory.

We enjoyed the second half better, but then I find I take some time to settle to the language and the plot. The stage was odd, being a pile of clothes and a few cardboard boxes and a tellie that localised the disaster of Twelfth Night’s drownings with the Victorian bushfires. I found that a tad insensitive. The cast of 7 (1 woman, 6 men) seemed to be on stage all the time, although sometimes hiding (or changing) behind that pile of clothes. There were men dressed as women, and of course the confusion of woman for man which is at the heart of the play. Poor Malvolio misses out and is embarrassed in the process, but the brother and sister, and even the maid, get their loves’ contents. I was a bit surprised by the (admittedly delicate) man playing Olivia, but I can see it fits a tale of sexual confusion. I had a problem with his voice which was the weakest of the cast. I liked Andrea Demetriades as Viola, and also Max Cullen as the fool Feste, but his part was pretty minimal while the rest of the cast slaved away as multiple characters. The Canberra Times review commented on the Canberra mentions, like the PM with a hairdresser as consort and a reference to missing Floriade. I was more interested in whether the Elephant pub still trades in London (“In the south suburbs, at the Elephant / Is best to lodge”) and the mention of “midsummer madness” (did this originate here?) and the po-mo self-referencing that shows that there’s nothing new in culture (“If this were played upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction”). I’m still pondering this mention of food “I am a great eater of beef, and I believe that does harm to my wit” and giggling at “A plague o' these pickle herring”. The final greeting of brother and sister as they meet was satisfying, even if Orsino’s change of love object was more difficult to accept. And the cast played it all with visual gags and slapstick that I guess would have been in the original. But it’s the forlorn “I was adored once too” that will stick with me. That was touching.

Shakepeare’s Twelfth Night was directed by Lee Lewis for the Bell Shakespeare Company at the Playhouse. The cast was Max Cullen (Feste), Ben Wood (Malvolio), Andrea Demetriades (Viola), Kit Brookman (Olivia), Brent Hill (Maria/Antonio/Valentine), Elan Zavelsky (Orsino/Sir Andrew Aguecheek) and Adam Booth (Sir Toby Belch/Sebastian).

Leery of Lear

Pic borrowed from Bell Shakespeare Company's website

King Lear is, of course, at the intellectual forefront of the western canon, so it was both a duty and a pleasure to see. John Bell is now of the appropriate age and is playing Lear for his third time. He talks of coming to a greater understanding of the play, given his experience and years. I felt comfortable with Bell as Lear. But it’s a complex plot, and even though I knew the basic plot and had seen several movie versions, I still found I was struggling to follow the details. My ears aren’t the best and I had to concentrate to just to catch the words, let alone think through their import in the first half. Sometimes there was percussion accompaniment; sometimes the enunciation or volume was difficult; at one time the voices were amplified over loud percussion, but they were distorting with a too-high gain setting. The second half was much better. Perhaps I’d settled into the middle English by then and the plot lines were resolving, so I knew what to expect. Whatever, the ending was easier, more like how I’ve found Bell Shakespeare to be in the past.

I left knowing that this was a great work but feeling somewhat unmoved. I’d eaten with some friends a few nights before who were iconoclastic enough to admit that they could take or leave the Parisian masterpieces, that visual arts just don’t do it for them, even the uberpop impressionists. I felt something like this. There’s obvious profundity there, but it’s distant from my experience. I couldn’t accept Lear’s anger with Cordelia in the first scene, and I equally couldn’t warm to Cordelia’s strangely punctilious and distant response to her father’s demands. OK, she was being true rather than obsequious, but too teenagerly literal in it all. Why not just humour him? Similarly, I found other responses were too extreme or unlikely. And then why the soppy characters winning in the end; how come the change in simple, honest Edgar to warrior superman; OK that the scheming sisters fell for the lithe and naughty Edmund, but would the honourable Albany really have been married to the tyro Goneril? 100 to 50 knights was OK but the drop to 25 and then 10,5,1 was too sudden. Cordelia just didn’t seem young and frail enough, and I didn’t quite catch the intent of the all-important letters. It’s a busy plot and nicely mirrored with the two misunderstanding fathers, but it takes considerable comprehension to follow the details. The plucking of Gloucester’s eyes was harrowing (but I’d seen worse in Titus Andronicus at Stratford on Avon). In the end, the stage was littered with three sisters and the bad son Edmund, and then Lear drops off, as becomes a tragedy, leaving a few admirable characters, Albany and Kent and Edgar.

Gigs can be lonely and distant for a band, and so I like to hoop it up a bit to show some involvement and support. Theatre isn’t quite like that, but at least a few chuckles for jokes or gasps for particularly distressing scenes can be expected. But the audience here was strangely quiet, as if they were having the problems I was. We value this great work, but we don’t particularly understand it or assimilate it. So in the end, Lear was a strangely truncated experience, not due to the play but rather to the audience and our distance from its world. Now, will I get any comments for this post???

Open mic: Wanderlust

I missed Wanderlust at the Band Room on Monday so I’d like to hear your comments on the gig.

I didn’t miss them a few weeks ago at Jazz Uncovered. It was a superb gig. There was a good crowd, comfortably ensconced in a large hall with a very good PA, everyone a bit weary after a solidly music-rich day. Wanderlust performed a 90 minute set, so there was no rush. The grooves were steady and evolving, the melodies were those simple but insinuatingly ones that we love from this band. The players were close and interactive, keeping eyes open and smiling freely, and the solos expressed this aurally. John Mackey sat in towards the end, playing his explosive style but perfectly in synch. It was a memorable gig, so it was with some disappointment that I didn’t catch this visit.

But it wasn’t a wasted night. Megan and I went back 400 years to Ben Johnson’s comedy of conmen, The Alchemist, performed with energy and masses of patter, by the Bell Shakespeare and Queensland Theatre Companies. It's a very different experience and quite out of time, despite the claims of relevance in this time of the GFC. And what got me was how verbal plays of this era were. There was just such a massive amount of text: over two hours of rapid fire, non-stop patter. I enjoy language (I’m no film buff; they are too often too visual) and this had one lengthy script. Quite an effort on everyone’s part, but worth a chuckle.

Just click on the comments link below and have your say on Wanderlust, or even The Alchemist if you so desire.