Author Archives: Charlotte Smith

Ilbijerri Theatre Company: Jack Charles v The Crown

‘I’m with those who haven’t bloomed, haven’t blossomed, who make wrong choices,’ says Jack Charles. His past is laid bare in the opening sequence from the biographical film Bastardy (2008), in which he nonchalantly injects heroin. The film’s tagline was even blunter: ‘Addict. Homosexual. Cat burglar. Actor. Aboriginal.’

This stage version is more nuanced, combining projections, live music, gentle conventional narrative, and pottery. A train hooting anticipates a visit by the Queen, whom the enthusiastic young Jack Charles greeted as family. Later the union flag is spat on and used for dusting, to polish a mock tombstone inscribed with just ‘CRN (criminal record number) 3944’.

Charles’s story hits home most when it’s combined with cheerfulness. His upbringing as the only Aboriginal boy in a Salvation Army home includes a childhood sweetheart, marching songs, gymnastics and parties, all seen through black and white photos. A thematic approach means the abuse is revealed gradually.

The toe-tapping three-piece band adds a great deal. The electric violin is a far cry from Hearts and Flowers, sounding more like an animal wail across a desert landscape. The musicians are definitely in tune with the storyline, not just when they perform jazz standards with the protagonist.

Jack Charles was incarcerated 22 times, often coming out of jail for six or nine months only to go back for two and a half years. He offers a ‘heartfelt apology’ to those from whom he stole ($26,000 and some Gucci in eight burglaries), but actually the show is unapologetic and righteously angry.

Autobiography is a tricky genre, opening the door to introspection and self-pity. Jack Charles v The Crown steers a steady course through this. It’s documented, to the extent of including a report on his post-traumatic stress disorder, but also with historical evidence from 19th-century Australia. It’s also well-constructed as a multimedia narrative.

However, as an actor, Jack Charles’ career really was cut short by prejudice and addiction. This manifests itself in a sort of hollowness. His ‘acted’ scenes, recreating his life as a performer, fall slightly flat, which could be evidence that we have been drawn into the story, believing the bulk of the acting to be real. Sometimes he comes across as an overanimated dinner guest.

So despite the honesty, worthiness and skill of the presentation, there remains a nagging doubt. The show is entertaining, but the price for this entertainment is uncomfortably high. The symbolism of the clay, the pottery, creation is clearly opposed to the tombstone and self-harm, but there’s no clear winner.

Robert Lepage: Playing Cards 1: Spades

Violence and symmetry are on the cards in Robert Lepage’s highly constructed Spades. It’s the first in a quartet of pieces, and the mind boggles as to how hearts, diamonds or even clubs could follow suit.

Spades is set in Las Vegas in 2003. The gambling revolves around not only casinos, but also the invasion of Iraq, a shotgun wedding and more entrenched problems like suicide, miscarriage or economic migration.

The characters caught in this net range from a Latino maid in drag (called Concepción, with bitter irony) to the slippery, mercurial TV producer Mark Turnbridge (played to perfection by Tony Guilfoyle). Along the way, there’s a charismatic preacher Elvis, naïve newlyweds, Danish and Spanish soldiers, a dominatrix (created with feisty physicality by Nuria Garcia) and a husky devil (aka Dick).

The spatial design is striking, and the set operates on different levels. Bar scenes show characters from the torso upwards only but with live filming on small screens; the stage is hollowed out to be a steamy pool, doors collapse horizontally, neon signs seem embedded in the audience on all four sides. And there are brilliant details, such as drinks that light up when spiked ice cubes are added.

It’s tempting to compare this to a Rubik’s cube, with pieces slotting into place horizontally and vertically. But the programme notes emphasise how the director is also working in 360 degrees, to give a spherical effect. By the time the fourth wall is so overtly broken in the final line, it’s arguable whether such a wall existed at all.

Perhaps it is the lethal cocktail of addiction, decadence, rape and termination that leave you longing for a sort of order. If only this conundrum could be solved like a children’s puzzle… or the Bible counted like cards, as the proselytising King suggests. Instead, you are craning to see a bit more cruelty, mesmerised by the number $1,032,155 or impatient to win.

The narrative is fractured, with short scenes interspersed, but the vignettes do make up a wider picture. We follow people through x-rays, chapels, reception, room 3426 and gamblers’ anonymous, even if this is not too narrowly linear. The strands of the story ultimately come together, as Mark’s gambling winnings are diverted by Concepción’s manager (for a diagnosis of early menopause), after a platitude from the receptionist sends him deep into the desert…

Spades can also leave you cold, however. The acting is virtuoso, with six players (seven crew) who flip between varied roles. On one level, it’s not hard to make connections if you’ve encountered money, desire or even breathing, but there is still something persistently analytical, almost clinical in the depiction. Like a traditional tragedy, the violence is upfront, but depth, texture and surprises follow.

Legendary Canadian theatre-maker Robert Lepage gave a radio interview the same morning. In the context of the Iraq war anniversary, and crusades against Islam, he argued that, paradoxically, Vegas grew around an Arabic culture of storytelling and poetry. (Spades itself is both culturally/linguistically rich and not above stereotype – with Scandinavian crusaders or the German bellboy who insists on fixing the phones just as the room occupants get in flagrante delecto). Lepage also let slip that he shocks critics by paying attention to reviews, and making alterations in response. So there’s no conclusion for Spades, only a work in progress.

Best of BE Festival

A hairy-chested man in a tutu shouldn’t be funny. But he riffs off a woman in the audience whose enthusiasm is neon, and a twitch of a smile escapes, a twinkle in the eye belies the studied exterior. It’s perhaps helped by the fact that much of the rest of Fantasy No 10; ‘The Beauty of Life’ by Compagnia Vladimir Tzekov from Granada is deliberately incomprehensible.

The piece seems to parody sentimentalism, torch songs, arrogance and wannabe heroes strutting about in leather. One character is unceremoniously tipped out of a wheelchair, and deadpan sex interrupts philosophical musings. Text morphs into movement and the sentiment may become more genuine. It’s certainly surreal.

In contrast, Solfatara by A Tres Bandes of Barcelona is accessibly witty as a couple’s life descends into chaos. We are told that human behaviour involves volcanic eruptions into private and public embarrassment, then shown some. They include a huge row about puff pastry and a dinner party that lacks food and alcohol.

Monica and Miquel have a real comic touch, helped by the onstage presence of ‘fear’, a disruptive character, the terrorist in the room. The hilarious English subtitles can also abandon the Spanish dialogue (eg ‘Puff pastry recipe. Dramatic interest = 0’). The result is adept, verbally dexterous, well observed and very funny, as well as tinged with tragedy that our connections are so petty.

The last piece in this trio of shorts from this year’s Birmingham European festival is L’Absent by the Brussels-based Compagnie du Geste qui Sauve. Its subtle, fluid mime conjures up a lost lover, as the male performer glides between playing a shower, kettle, chair, scarf or coat and an elusive ghost. Currently barely twenty minutes long, it has gentle depth, ingenuity and a mute intimacy.

All three performances won prizes at the BE festival, and are touring to bring a piece of that event to venues nationwide. A question and answer session has all the performers on stage afterwards (there’s also post-show music from the Scandimaniacs). We learn, for example, that director Manuel Bonillo uses musical structures for his work, and Artaud replaced Grotowski as inspiration; the Belgium company seek the simplest gesture to tell everyday stories, so objects are impregnated with memory; and Solfatara’s priceless subtitles were conceived just for the UK performances. All in all, a varied, refreshing programme.

Nic Green: Slowlo

Conceived for eight people in an outdoor woodland space, Slowlo is performed indoors against a city skyline at dusk. A clod of earth, a bowl of rose water, dirty clothes and primeval song are reminders of the original forest setting.

Despite the electricity, it must have been cold enough for a naked performer. Nic Green, known for persuading scores of female audience members to strip for Trilogy at Edinburgh Festival Fringe, duly takes off all her clothes. I feel a faintly British sense of embarrassment, and relief when they’re back on again. But it’s OK – she’s kindly already told us that the attention can wander.

Slowlo is a meditation on a year of solitude in south-west Scotland – a year that included hours and days of silence, poetry, bird watching, yoga, being half-buried in earth for a week, Henry David Thoreau, seasons passing, and making friends with the postman. A trucker called Kevin, the narrator’s nearest and only neighbour, conveniently provides something of a plot by throwing himself under a passing train, thereby avoiding any more 4.30am starts. He leaves a cryptic text message saying ‘two deer’.

The piece can be sententious if not pretentious. The voice that is skilfully projected in the final bellows seems overly ponderous at the start, making the scene-setting a bit heavy-handed. The movement is strong yet comes in snatches, raising the question as to whether the fusion of genres (dance, storytelling, physical theatre, song, etcetera) has a price, achieving breadth but making the depth contrived.

Nic’s mantra of ‘calm activity’, a focus of the year as the seasons take their circular course, is perhaps an acquired taste. The audience is absorbed, connected, serious, yet this sort of engagement involves a wrench from the Evening Standard, water bottle, Oyster card and commuter crush of a London night. A cynic might question the cost of such a retreat, and whether such a contrast preyed on Kevin’s mind.

There is plenty of warmth and dedication in the performance. Even at the start, people bravely smell and sip the rose water that is passed round the audience circle. By the end, we exchange names – it seems a little deliberate, hard but important, and Nic says to everyone ‘I see you’, with a reassuring twinkle in the eye. However, expectations were high and this specific piece, stranded without a site, is not startling, yet.

Wet Picnic: Death and Gardening

Yellow raincoats, oversize glasses, woolly hats and torches… do they sound a familiar bunch? Ah, but you didn’t know that Gherkin, Flora and Brian come to collect people before they die. Like the hapless 30 year-old David (Viktor Lukawski), who spends some of the show on a vertical deathbed.

At its best, Death and Gardening by Wet Picnic is very funny. The ‘celestial tour guides’ take David on a whistlestop tour, morphing into his loved ones and using every trick (leather, lectures, trips and whips) to take him away.

Perhaps the strongest scene is when he reaches ‘admin’, an undefined limbo where you have to fill in a form (name, shoe size, belief in reincarnation, etcetera). Graeme Cockburn is in his element as a secretarial gatekeeper with just a touch of Kenneth Williams. He even puts David on hold, listening to The Girl from Ipanema, when they’re standing only a couple of feet away from each other.

The soundtrack is unapologetically 1980s. It lends itself to gutsy routines, such as to The Final Countdown, and tongue-in-cheek references (Phil Collins’ In the Air Tonight), though stopping short of Doctor and the Medics’ Spirit in the Sky. There’s also some more filler-type music – unidentified piano and violins.

Generally, the physical theatre is stylish, but the words sometimes underwhelming. A starry sequence of torches is subtly coordinated, and Judy Barrington-Smuts, Charlotte Dubery and Jessica Hinds add some oomph as blatant madames. But the text drifts into sentimentality and a ‘death puppet’ never seems to be anything more than a purple rag and some sort of ping-pong ball.

The ‘other’ dimension is usually more intriguing than the ‘real-life’ hospital scenes, although the line is not always that clear. A simple but surreal design allows a garden to fold out of the hospital bed, with no.14 Bentwood chairs hanging in the wings.

Death and Gardening flirts with cliché, but bites back. The cast is talented, the execution has panache and the show is still in development, with many of the collaborators having fingers in an impressive number of theatrical pies. Perhaps it could go further beyond its comfort zone, but the humour and movement are already sharp.

Total Theatre