Australian main stages are finally catching up with multiracial casting. It’s about time. Alison Croggon on An Ideal Husband and Julius Caesar
Last week saw the opening of two classic plays – Melbourne Theatre Company’s An Ideal Husband and Bell Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar – which featured not one, not two, but several people of colour in each cast, some playing leading roles. Maybe Australian main stages are finally catching up with the concept of multiracial casting.
It’s well past time: Australia has long lagged behind the US and the UK on this practice. And classic plays are a bastion worth attacking: aside from the question of their cultural prestige, whenever they are restaged they become, even in the most conservative productions, reflections of our own time. I guess there will always be people who claim that pre-20th century European worlds were entirely white (not true, as it happens, even in high society England). But it’s an odd relief watching a multiracial cast in which the people on stage look something like the people walking down the streets outside, a sense that the world on the stage isn’t entirely divorced from the world beyond it.
The Melbourne Theatre Company’s An Ideal Husband is a reminder that there’s a lot to be said for an excellent straight production of a classic play. With his designer Dale Ferguson, director Dean Bryant has concentrated on realising Wilde’s fantasy world of glamorous houses and impossibly articulate characters. Wilde’s plays are frivolous diversions, in the best sense. He created chandeliers of language, all sparkle and cutting edges: their primary purpose is delight. And I found this production delightful.
Unlike The Importance of Being Earnest, An Ideal Husband isn’t all glittering surfaces. Beneath the farce and the Wildean quips is a question about whether it’s possible to maintain integrity in a society that is irredeemably corrupt. Sir Robert Chiltern (Simon Gleeson) is an ambitious politician on the verge of being appointed to the Cabinet, who has for years maintained a reputation for incorruptibility. He is married to social activist Lady Chiltern (Zindzi Okenyo), who idealises him as the perfect man, pure in all his conduct.
The arrival of the beautiful but unscrupulous Mrs Cheveley (Christie Whelan Browne) threatens to bring the whole edifice tumbling down, as she possesses a damning letter that reveals his career and wealth stem from a corrupt act in his youth when he sold Cabinet secrets to an investor. She plans to blackmail him, threatening not only his career but his marriage. Sir Robert’s self-interested defence is that of all politicians who compromises themselves: “Every man of ambition has to fight his century with its own weapons”. Without wealth, he claims, he is powerless, and can effect no change at all.
Beneath that is a slightly different argument that no one is perfect, except possibly Lady Chiltern, and can’t be held to such inhuman standards. It’s impossible not to link this plea with Wilde’s own public humiliation: the infamous trial which saw him imprisoned for sodomy was the same year as the first performance of An Ideal Husband. In the play, as it is a comedy, the action plays out to happy coupledness, with the deeper questions left in suspension. We all know what happened to Wilde in real life.
Bryant’s production achieves the tricky balance between melodrama and farce with a nice precision, so that the more serious questions resonate as bass notes in the frivolity. Ferguson’s ingenious design features full-length drop curtains, sunflower yellow and deep burgundy, that stretch diagonally across the stage, leaving all the detailing to the sumptuous costumes and furniture. Matthew Frank’s sound and Matt Scott’s lighting design are equally light in their touch. The whole creates the impression of sparkle and luxury without fuss or overdressing.
I felt much the same about the performances, which after a bit of initial stickiness on opening night warmed into being stylised without archness. There are strong performances from all the cast, down to Josh Price’s lugubrious butler, and several standouts. Zindzi Okenyo as the earnest Lady Chiltern might have the most difficult role, since she is the straight man to the comedy, but she plays her character’s sincerity with an underlying passion that invests her with depth.
As the irredeemable Mrs Cheveley, Christie Whelan Browne is both charming and darkly cynical, but somehow suggests a hint of vulnerability. Brent Hill’s Lord Goring, a dandy and wit who proves to be the most moral character of all, is played with impeccable timing and handles the Beardsley-style poses with comic flair. He pairs very nicely with the ingenuously frivolous Miss Mabel Chiltern (Michelle Lim Davidson). And there is of course a star turn by Gina Riley as the high society gossip Lady Markham.
In short, this production is an excellent antidote to the bleakness of midwinter Melbourne. Bell’s Julius Caesar is sadly not so successful. Directed by James Evans, his first main stage production after an apprenticeship in Bell’s education program, it’s marred by a directorial sluggishness that lets down the cast. It’s a pity, because there’s promise in Evans’ dystopian vision of Rome, but without a steely scaffolding of thought it just collapses into mush.
Shakespeare’s Roman plays, Coriolanus and Julius Caesar, are fascinating speculations about the machinations of power between the rulers and the ruled. I don’t know if he read Machiavelli, but Shakespeare certainly understood that the Prince must win the loyalty of his people if he is to remain in power, and that winning that loyalty isn’t necessarily about being honest or just. Of course they have contemporary application in a public world constituted almost entirely of spin, but the purchase in this production is wobbly at best.
I thought the ensemble cast floundered in this production, although there were good individual performances. Ivan Donato as Brutus is strong in the central role, portraying the soldierly stoicism of the servant of the Republic, who is prepared to murder his friend for the sake of the common good, but fatally doesn’t fully understand the political consequences. Kenneth Ransom looks the part of Caesar, but appeared to have a cold: I don’t remember his voice being so dodgy in La Boite’s Prize Fighter and unfortunately in Shakespeare, this really tells.
There are some puzzling dramaturgical decisions. Most tellingly, the two famous speeches on which the drama turns – Brutus’ and Mark Antony’s (Sara Zwangobani) orations at Caesar’s funeral – are neatly bisected by an interval. The point and power of these two speeches is how Mark Antony icily inverts Brutus’s plea for justice, getting the mob howling for Brutus’ blood. Separating the two means that this electrifying contrast is completely lost. Worse, it means that the energy that is finally beginning to percolate into the production is completely dissipated, leaving the cast to begin all over again.
Anna Tregloan’s set is a billboard on wheels that can be turned around to become a stage or to suggest interiors. It’s a clever idea which ought to have permitted quick and fluid transitions, but somehow didn’t. But mostly the problems are in the detail: the pacing is off, for instance, with a lot of time wasted getting people on and off stage. A lot of the gestural decisions end up being confusing (when Portia stabs her thigh to demonstrate her stoic loyalty to her husband Brutus, it’s anybody’s guess what she’s actually done, and the stylised murder of Caesar fails to be dramatic or tense or really anything at all). You can see the intentions around the production, but they remain merely intentions. And we all know good intentions are not enough.
The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde, directed by Dean Bryant. Design by Dale Ferguson, lighting by Matt Scott, composition and sound design by Matthew Frank. With Simon Gleeson, Brent Hill, Joseph Lai, Jem Lai, Michelle Lim Davidson, William McInnes, Zindzi Okenyo, Josh Price, Gina Riley, Greta Sherriff and Christie Whelan Browne. Melbourne Theatre Company at the Playhouse, Arts Centre Melbourne, until August 18. Bookings
Julius Caesar by Williams Shakespeare, directed by James Evans. Designed by Anna Tregloan, lighting by Verity Hampson, composition and sound design by Nate Edmondson. Performed by Kenneth Ransom, Jemwel Danao, Ivan Donato, Maryanne Fonceca, Ghenoa Gela, Neveen Hanna, Emily Havea, Nick, Simpson-Deeks, Russell Smith and Sara Zwangobani. Bell Shakespeare at Arts Centre Melbourne until July 28. Touring dates and bookings
Arts Centre Melbourne is wheelchair accessible and accepts Companion Cards
An Ideal Husband access performances:
Audio described and tactic tours: Tuesday 31 July, 6.30pm and Saturday 4 August, 2pm.
Auslan interpreted performance: Saturday 11 August, 2pm
Captioned performance: Thursday 2 August 8pm
For more information, contact the MTC via info@mtc.com.au or 03 8688 0800, or Arts Centre Melbourne on 03 9281 8000 (TTY 03 9281 8441).
Julius Caesar access performance:
Captioned and Auslan interpreted performance on Saturday 21 July at 2pm.
3 comments
We saw MTC’s Ideal Husband last night and it seemed to me that Wilde’s plays are a bit like a gardening suit that used to be Sunday-best. The script still sparkles like chandeliers and champagne, but in amongst the crystal bubbles the cast find little opportunity to express any meaningful passion – it can all seem such a sham. Zinzi Okenyo’s Lady Chiltern is a marvel – she simply surfs across the froth, commanding attention, stealing the stage whenever she speaks and being the Voice of Reason. Michelle Lim Davidson’s Mabel is the very distillation of the Swiss-finishing-school giggly girl with a twist of Saint Trinians. Perfect. Brent Hill seems to have found Lord Goring’s character on a plate and swallowed it whole – he manages the subtlety of transition from idle fop to moral paragon stylishly and effortlessly – what the Italians call sprezzatura, the art of studied nonchalance. A gorgeous performance.
William McInnes is suitably magnificent; I say that with a touch of vanity because years ago I worked on a show in which he appeared and was more than once mistaken for him, by his dresser. That small matter notwithstanding, his commanding presence and resonant vowels as round as the billiard balls at Whites, are among the heaviest-calibre artillery in the Director’s armoury, but I could not see the target the guns were aimed at. Gina Riley, of course, scored bulls-eyes with every shot, and I noted that Wilde set her a hard task: so many of her laugh-lines come in pairs, or are tags to exits, that she must work harder to land the second through the merriment of the first. She nailed every single one. What can be said about Christie Whelan Browne that has not been said before? Dressing her was obviously an utter joy to Dale Ferguson and Sophie Woodward, and Christie’s Act 2 dress deserves a Helpmann Award on its own. Frocking brilliant, and I suspect that she rather enjoys wearing it. Her poise is pitiless in its perfection, and she revels in it, exquisitely.
Simon Gleason’s Sir Robert is earnest (I choose that adjective with care in a Wilde context), appropriate, correct, everything he ought to be, because he is actually the foil for everyone else in the play. I found myself longing for him to sing, if only to shut the others up. Anyone who has read this far will get that I loved the cast, and every performance they delivered.
Not so sure about the set. Alison describes it as ‘ingenious’. Sorry, everybody, I thought it was awful. When will set designers stop ruling a diagonal line across the floor plan as a starting-out? It compresses every actor’s movement into two-and-a-half dimensions, putting them into the same three-cornered formation again and again and makes the scenery workshop fill the bin with triangular offcuts. Worse yet, a ceiling! A needless black triangle overhead, invisible to half the house, serving no purpose whatever except to force lighting designer Matt Scott to overload the front-of -house perches, casting actor-shadows on the over-dominant drapes.
Perhaps Dale Ferguson and Den Bryant had a meeting where they agreed to step away from the traditional clutter of tea-sets, serving-trays and cucumber sandwiches in favour of a more robust approach to the meat and potatoes of the drama. The result is a sparse set with scant furniture (most of which is recycled from scene to scene) and, honestly, not enough stage business to make it work. When entire scenes are played with no other action that the getting up from one chair in order to sit in another (not actually in a Beardsley pose but in a too-often repeated copy of the same one), it is too easy for an audience to feel adrift in an ocean of words. I’m sorry, Dean and Dale, but I think it just doesn’t quite work. It’s too sparse, too economical and if I dare it, pedestrian. If you had not the good fortune to assemble so magnificent a company of actors, I really don’t think the season would be extending, but thank you, anyway, for a nice night at the theatre.
Hi Matthew, thanks so much for your comment, which I only now, very belatedly, have seen – apologies for that! Yes, the actors are truly what make this production, but I really did adore the set. For me, its very sparseness allowed the performances to shine, it was such a relief not to see the usual design tropes while at the same time feeling situated in the appropriate fiction, and the diagonal spaces were actually well used (choreographically) to my eye. That space behind, opening and closing perspectives!
Last Saturday we saw Colin Friels in Scaramouche Jones. I’ll start by saying I adored every moment. I saw the original, with Pete Postlethwaite, and fifteen years on, comparisons are hardly plausible. I remember enough to know that the two were very different; Friels seems to range further with his voice, mimicking many accents and intonations; Postlethwaite drew more on his gift for mime. Both were moments of pure and priceless theatre magic.
It is a splendid example of a sparse set being only a background for a play where the paintbrush is the actor’s voice and all the scenery is painted in the imagination with a palette of words and sentences. Wilde’s sparkling dialogue is of a quite different character, it paints pictures of people being ‘brilliant’ but still being people, doing, acting and interacting in plausible environments. Alison and I may never agree; our viewpoints are so different I think we are a diameter apart and I’m fine with that. I assume (not unreasonably, I hope) that her view of a play is focussed on the script and he actors’ delivery of it; mine tends to begin with the floor-plan of the set and the lighting-rig. Alison’s life is made out of writing, mine out of scenery and pushing it around. I like to see Wilde done with tea-sets and serving-tongs, sherry-decanters and shoe-trees, soda-siphons and bell-pulls (yes, I do over-hyphenate), and it delights me to see actors who exhibit advanced skill (not much taught at NIDA, VCA and WAAPA) at handling props.
A description of all the business in Scaramouche Jones would scarcely fill a beer-mat: he lights a candle, fiddles with a newspaper and sheds a few garments – that’s about it, but not for a moment did we wonder what he was doing or would do next – the dense tapestry of words was being so thickly woven around us, we were entirely enveloped. Wilde’s comedies will never work like that, their magic is of a different colour.
I really will make an effort and go to the September Live Night and slug it out with Alison, face-to-face.
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