Directed by Jenny Kemp. At the Sumner Theatre 25 August to 29 September 2012.

Top Girls, directed by Jenny Kemp for the MTC, is a revelation. With her uniformly excellent cast and tight, considered control over the details, Kemp has taken a feminist ur-text of the 80’s often best remembered for it’s magical first act, and made it whole again.

Feminism remains a flashpoint for the global culture at large, perhaps more so than ever – and despite the long march of reason in the great levelling between the genders, barely a day goes past where conversation doesn’t turn to whether Australia’s Prime Minister is or is not a ‘cow’, or if (as witnessed recently in the US)there is any such thing as ‘legitimate rape’. Caryl Churchill’s Top Girls, set against the background of 80’s Britain where Thatcher has the reins of power, is most devastating in revealing how deep and rich and undeniable the feminine claim to strength and greatness and misery is in the story of the human race. Class strife is another, looming concern that haunts the play – this, too, gives Top Girls an urgent vitality when considering the acceleration of wealth disparity since the 1980’s.

Jenny Kemp has elicited a slew of outstanding performances from her cast. Not a movement or thought is wasted. Anita Hegh is wonderful throughout, giving Marlene an arch dash of Ab Fab’s wit while capturing the hollow depths within her character. Sarah Ogden brings adept physicality and humour to the hellish story of Dull Gret, and Maria Theodorakis shows considerable range in conveying both the humanity of Pope Joan and the quiet desperation of Marlene’s struggling sister Joyce. Eryn Jean Norvill, as in her recent stint as Ophelia in MTC’s production of Hamlet, is mesmerising as Angie, the damaged innocent in the middle of the cultural storm. Her evocation of the child is both brittle and bold at once, and is a truly first-class performance.

Watching a production like this can remind the audience that first and foremost, theatre is an act of movement – not just the physical body moving through the space but also the movement of language, how it is embodied, how it evokes characters in the mind of the audience, how it rises and falls, challenges, where it turns back in on itself. Everything in this production conveys meaning not in a clever or self-conscious way, but artfully – and in what one feels is a deeply personal manner. This, at last, is integral to this rendition of Top Girls succeeding where it does. It powerfully reminds us that the personal is political.

The thicket of tongues and accents that the play sustains is a challenge for any ensemble. Geraldine Cooke as dialect coach has coaxed faithful cadences from all the actors, and never is the audience lost for meaning – unless Churchill wants them to be. It is in this dazzling overlap of language and that Jenny Kemp and the production as a whole takes flight, with the tempo and interplay of argument perfectly pitched. Dale Ferguson’s restrained, refined and ably managed sets background the language beautifully – unfussy, and transporting – and the composer Elizabeth Drake’s soundtrack is deliberate and effective.

If the main stages are to continue presenting modern classics, then one can only hope they all carry at least the standard that this production achieves. Actorly intelligence, supple lighting, a mercurial and engaging script and a disciplined and interrogative director have combined to bring a potent, powerful and utterly memorable rendition of Top Girls to the Sumner this spring.

original review via everguide.com.au

Sarasota, Florida 1974. 

Christine Chubbuck, presenter and regular news anchor can see that the potential of television has become stunted, oversaturated with blood and commercial bullying. She rails against her superiors about the output of the station. 

Crafting puppets to entertain the mentally disabled children of Sarasota, Christine has her solaces – but they are soon to be swallowed by the void within. Her last story will be her biggest, a savage comment on the politics of programming, and a resounding cry for attention that is broadcast to an indifferent world. 

The on-air suicide of television news reporter Christine Chubbuck inspired the 1976 film Network. The anchorwoman was suffering from depression and unable to keep going; she shot herself on camera as stunned viewers watched on July 15, 1974.

STRICTLY LIMITED SEASON. Bookings at gasworks.org.au

When I was in high-school, Henry Rollins was a one-man factory of awesome. A friend had turned me onto Rollins Band, a heavy blues-based hard rock outfit that was a powerful antidote to the generic grunge bands at were washing up on the post-Nirvana tide. Rollins, in addition to having the most ball-tearing back tattoo I’d ever seen, was not only a singer, but a writer, a publisher, and punk philosopher, having led the seminal Black Flag through the hazy hardcore squall of 80s punk (the journey of which is painfully, powerfully detailed in Get in the Van – mandatory reading for any band today who think they’re hard-done-by). Hank strong-armed his way into my consciousness in a way that few have since. And it’s always interesting to hear what he’s been up to…

With Rollins, naturally, the answer is – a hell of a lot. No stranger to Australia, Rollins returns again with The Long March, an extensive tour of the states and territories. After a gently funny support act from a long-haired gent in a purple mohair jumper, who’s name I unfortunately missed but who zinged out classic low-key stand-up observations in the Eliot Goblet mold, Rollins bounded onto the stage in signature blacks, looking somewhat muscularly-diminished from his powerhouse days but still vibrating with a seething, coiled energy. Winding the mic cord around his fist, he launched straight into things, kicking off with an encomium to Australia’s sexy kick-arsedness and segueing from there to some comments on the American republic, paraphrasing Abraham Lincoln’s insight from the Lyceum Address that the only threat to America is from America itself. If ever we need cheering up, Rollins suggested, we should tune in now and then to the daily dog-and-pony show of the American presidential primaries in the lead up to their November election.

Barely shifting position and rarely seeming to breathe, Rollins shared some fan stories. A man of Rollin’s legendary intensity doesn’t get your average fan-mail, as may be expected. A surprisingly powerful moment of the night came early with the story of an American soldier in Iraq, instructed by his CO to shoot at a building with no intelligence to suggest there was a threat inside. As every other squad member stood down from the order, one took the command and open fired. On entering the building, a freshly-killed child was discovered, evidently the result of the soldier’s volley. The soldier, racked with guilt, subsequently shot himself in the hand as penance and was sent home, later writing to Rollins begging him to say something to convince him not to shoot himself. In another instance, the mother of another soldier killed in action writes Rollins to thank him for having given her son some laughs through his spoken word DVD’s, and adds him to her Christmas card list.

Rollins, for the most part, is an engaging storyteller. His energy never flags, but sometimes he can caught in little cul-de-sacs – he knows where he is going, but sometimes forgets how to get there quickly. Despite this, though, he is relentlessly entertaining. If ever Texas secedes from the American union, Rollins is going to be there to make sure that Austin is stolen and brought back into the fold. On advice for young melancholics, he espouses the wonders of Tom Waites and omelettes. Age is now a running joke for the self-confessed ‘former alternative icon’ – he mentions Mark Twain as a fan of his old band Black Flag, and constantly references his hey-day in the 1850′s. After reflecting on his 50th year over a

tuna sandwich in a New York diner, Rollins takes us on a travelogue of sorts – South India, where he hunts rats and snakes for a National Geographic special (and graphic it is, as he describes eating the wildlife); the American south, to a Pentacostal church with a bad-ass blues pastor and drum-mad granny; North Korea, closely shepherded by the regime; Haiti, buying bulk soap supplies and soccer balls for the slum towns; and Vietnam, under the guide of the hilarious history expert Mr Car, a tale of dogmeat and the downed plane of former presidential candidate John McCain. His Nat Geo cameraman, Australian Chris Denton, is amusingly parodied by Rollins, seemingly there at every step to puncture Rollins’ tough guy persona.

With Hank, there’s always a lot of ground to cover, and these days he does so in the manner of a motormouth old friend regaling you with everything he’s been up to since you last caught up. He’s likley not interested in winning new fans or audiences, though he manages to do so regardless – as he himself admits, he says yes to anything as any good ‘work-slut’ does, which keeps him in the eye of culture’s storm. But the fire and brimstone of earlier years has given way to a somehow gentler Henry, one who is passionate about humanitarian concerns and driven to seek, and do, what he can while he can. Neither a comedian, nor a motivational speaker, nor a prophet, he is still capable of encouraging people to do great things with their lives, and though a little greyer and crooked of frame, he bears a fearless optimism that is infectious.

originally featured at everguide.com.au

Not The Weatherman. But indicative of the mood everyone is in, on a digital television.

It is with sheer excitement and a bouquet of gratitude that I can say The Weatherman, a comedy concept pilot from Dark Heart Productions, has hit its target of $72,500 and is heading into production.

This follows from its screening at The New York TV Festival in late 2011, where from over 4000 applicants, The Weatherman was screened for Festival audiences to encouraging responses. Remember Ira from Mad About You? No? Anyway, I do – and he loved it. I think. There was a lot of free Stella Artois at the Festival. Soon after, though, the pilot was to find itself in interesting new waters. Mobcaster.

For those who don’t know, Mobcaster is a new platform similar to Kickstarter or Pozble, entirely dedicated to the purpose of crowd-sourcing funding to independently produce and air TV series. Creative groups pitch directly to the audience, and must attain funding within a 90 day window – otherwise no money is paid by contributors, and the idea and team behind it has to have a sit down somewhere until it knows what to do with itself.

Unlike other creative groups, however, Dark Heart weren’t pitching for money to shoot a pilot. They’d already done that, filming The Weatherman pilot with a meagre $4000. A half hour comedy, with scripts ready to roll. So why not take it further? Why not pitch a whole damn series? Where some groups had ninety days to hit $8000, for instance, Dark Heart needed $72,500.

And, thanks to the donations from many friends, family, fellow-travelers, well-wishers and (I hope anyway) unnamed celebrities, The Weatherman will soon be entering production – yep, it got there. A full six half-hour episode season of a brand new Australian comedy is coming, independently produced, independently financed. The internet sure is a great place to be. If you haven’t so already, you can view the full pilot here.

Toby Schmitz and Ewen Leslie in The Wild Duck

Ewen Leslie has had a cracking couple of years. A graduate of WAAPA (Western Australian Academy for Performing Arts) and with film credits such as Jewboy, Kokoda and the forthcoming Dead Europe under his belt, he has also been blazing a trail and collecting Helpmann and Green Room awards like pocket lint across the Australian stages, in stellar productions such as Richard III, Hamlet, The Trial, and most recently, a remount of Belvoir’s The Wild Duck, directed by Simon Stone and opening at the Malthouse Theatre in Melbourne in just over a week’s time.  Everguide and I managed to grab him from rehearsals for a short while to talk about ducks, revolves, mates and theatre and stuff. This is the unedited interview with Ewen Leslie, which originally featured here at Everguide. The Wild Duck is showing until March 17 at The Malthouse.

The Wild Duck is opening soon. How’s it feeling?

Good. We’re in the second day of rehearsing. We did it a year ago in Sydney at Belvoir, so we’re only rehearsing for a week and a half. It always feels kind of weird when you step back into something, and all of a sudden something that felt really kind of good and comfortable for four or five weeks all of a sudden feels, you know, weird. But its coming together, it’s a great group of people and the director Simon Stone is really great, so it’s good fun.

It’s a remount obviously, you don’t have the opportunity to re-investigate too much.

In terms of production and design and stuff its essentially the same. The good things in terms of acting and the scenes and stuff, you do try and do some new stuff, chuck some new stuff in there and see if it works. We all kind of said, ‘well, if one person can’t do it we won’t do it’, so all the cast members were in. If it was just about doing it exactly like we did last time beat for beat then it wouldn’t seem entirely worth it.

It would defeat the purpose, surely. Where would the fun be?

That’s it. So in rehearsals you’re really chucking as much stuff at the wall as you can and seeing what sticks and what works, and then putting it into the Malthouse Theatre in Melbourne we’re kind of seeing what happens.

You’ve been getting a lot of critical acclaim over the last few years. Has that been a distraction for you in any way at all?

The last couple of years, especially down in Melbourne… I did Richard III a couple of years ago, and then the follow up year we did Hamlet, and they were such great opportunities and I was stoked to be given the chance, but they were two very different… I mean, when we were rehearsing Richard III, I don’t think there was too much expectation in the sense that it hadn’t sold too many tickets, you know. Of course I didn’t know any of this, but once we opened and word of mouth got out, it went really well, whereas Hamlet was sort of the opposite – we were pretty much sold out before we even started rehearsals, and that brings other sort of pressure and stress. I don’t know. Its kind of hard to… there’s some stuff you read that are really lovely things, you kind of go ‘well that’s great’, then continue doing the work, you know what I mean? And kind of see what happens, because every show and every experience is completely different, and there’s so many factors at work that I guess I’ve always had the sort of viewpoint of ‘well, I’ll just keep doing what I’m doing’, and do the best I can in every situation, and just see how it goes.

A very sound approach, I think.

Yeah (laughs).

Because of the nature of the beast, what acting is, what is it to talk about your work – is it difficult?

It is, kind of… because so much of the time it comes from a personal place, to go into the situations you’re in you’ve kind of got to delve into yourself a bit and find the place within yourself to invest into the role and the scenes and stuff. I suppose it can be a pretty tricky thing to talk about it at times. And even sometimes I kind of get the feeling that there are some things you do want to talk about, and  other times where you sort of go, ‘well, I think I might kind of keep that to myself, because that’s my method or way of working’, and you want to make sure that it keeps working for you. But every show and every experience… The experience of doing this show is so vastly different to doing Shakespeare, like Richard III or Hamlet, and the experience of working with Simon Stone is so vastly different than working with Simon Phillips who directed those shows. You constantly sort of adapt yourself to who you’re working with and the people that are working around you. Different actors work in different ways and it feels like it’s a constant negotiation. And a compromise, and not in a bad way, but you’ve got to best work out how your way of working is going to fit with someone else’s way of working and how all the actors fit with the director who’s doing the show.

And that’s really at the heart of ‘play’, isn’t it, that negotiation.

Yeah, totally. And the great thing about Simon Stone in this show that we’re doing is that he encourages spontaneity. I mean, every director does, but in terms of the text, when we’re on the floor anything we want to chuck in or add in, he’s open to that. And he might not always go, ‘that’s great, keep it in there’. Indeed, over the last couple of days I’ve done things where he’s gone ‘No’, but at the same time that’s specific to this play with him, as opposed to doing Shakespeare where you can’t start making up lines in ‘To be or not to be’ where people aren’t going to be too into it.

You’ve got that rigourous superstructure to Shakespeare that you need to fit into in most cases.

Completely.

What’s great about watching you play is that you never seem to hold back – when I saw The Trial at the Malthouse, I remember thinking Joseph K would die of exhaustion before he got to the heart of what was happening to him. I could see you really working, breathing. I remember thinking what a challenging experience it must have been, especially off the back of Richard, to have these tough roles complementing one another.

Yeah, that was tough. We did that show The Trial in Melbourne, then we did it in Sydney, then we did it in Perth. So by the end of it I think I’d done it seventy three times. That was an especially tough one because I didn’t get to leave the stage, ever, which means that I didn’t even get to sort of, it sounds silly to say, but I didn’t even get to drink water. But with Richard III there were a few moments where I could get off stage and have a quick swig, and in Hamlet he goes to England so you get a bit of time off stage to weigh up how its going, where something like The Trial felt like running a marathon every night.

Given especially that you don’t have that opportunity to step off, and that stage revolve being so relentless in that, one slip in concentration and you would have found yourself walking into a wall, surely?

There actually was a bit in the set where we called it the Mincer, where there was a point in the revolve, and because it was so close to the wall if you misjudged an entrance and came in too late or too early you could get seriously injured, between the scenes. I mean, technically it was all sort of worked out to the nth degree, but it was a funny one to do because off the back of Richard III, so much of that play (Richard) was him kind of attacking people, I was constantly coming at people and they were having to deal with the character, whereas with The Trial it was the complete opposite. I’d lie in the bed for twenty minutes before the show even started, and then I’d wake up and all of a sudden there were all of these people just constantly coming at me, attacking me, so in a way it was the absolute flip-side of my experience with Richard III.

They’re interesting companion pieces on reflection, I think. What does there have to be in a script or in a director, for instance Simon Stone, for you to jump at a piece of work. Have you ever though twice about something you’ve said yes to?

It changes. Sometimes it’s a director whose work you don’t know, or haven’t seen that much of, and then it can kind of be about the play and the role, you say ‘oh, well I would love to that role, I would love to do that play’, whereas with something like The Wild Duck, we didn’t have a script. We had the original Ibsen play, a five act, sixteen character period piece that went for three hours, but Simon’s take on it was ‘here’s the play, here’s the plot, but I’m going to condense it down to six characters and its going to go for eighty minutes, and although its completely the same story and plot, its actually going to be completely rewritten and contemporised. Stepping into that situation, you’re literally saying yes to something you have no idea what you’re going to get handed on the first day of rehearsal. But looking at that scenario, I’d seen a lot of Simon’s work where he had done that sort of stuff, and the cast… I stepped into this situation not knowing what the script was, but it was completely about the people. It changes from thing to thing

The unknown is a great place to start working, isn’t it?

Completely. And even when we started rehearsals on this a year ago, we only had three quarters of the script – Simon and Chris (Chris Ryan, co-writer) had an overview of where it was it was going to go, and that was a really exciting process to be a part of.

Simon has a daunting intellect – it must have felt good to know that he’s there four or five steps ahead, as you’d hope from any director.

Completely. And even when you approach something in a script where you go ‘I don’t quite get this bit’, or ‘can we possibly change this line’, he’ll say no, and give you a very detailed , very well thought out reason as to why it is and why he wants you to say it. It comes down to trust. You want to work with people that you trust, and people that excite you, and the idea of doing this with Simon ticks all of those boxes.

The Wild Duck is the latest in a kind of progression of plays in recent years, not just from Simon Stone, to take existing works as the starting point for theatrical exploration. Why do you think that there has been this resurgence in classic texts that are being re-animated and made new?

I’m not entirely sure. I suppose… that’s a really good question. I couldn’t tell you for sure… maybe they haven’t been seen or haven’t been done a lot, where they feel there’s a need I guess to reinvent them, but also to tear them apart a bit and make them… I mean, what Simon’s done with The Wild Duck, he just gave it such a great sense of immediacy. I mean, I haven’t seen Thyestes, which is just opening in Sydney -

Thyestes is a great piece of work.

I heard it was awesome. I suppose there is something in these works that Simon wants to look at the central plot and the central ideas and turn them into pieces of work that become very contemporary, immediate, and something that people can kind of relate to and get excited by.

A strange question, maybe, but what’s the most audacious thing you’ve seen a fellow performer do onstage?

The most amazing performance I’ve seen recently is Cate Blanchett in Gross Und Klein at the STC. She was amazing, I mean she obviously is amazing, and I’ve worked with her once before and seen her, but in this she was just extraordinary. And it seemed so sort of brave. I’m friends with lots of actors, and the great thing is you get to see your friends push themselves and do stuff – when you see a friend do something they haven’t done before, and they’re doing stuff that you know is not in a safe place for them, it becomes a really inspiring thing to see. And it makes you kind of want to push yourself to do the same for yourself. So I really can’t wait to see Thyestes.

Getting back to The Wild Duck, I understand there’s an actual duck in the production?

Yeah man. We are dealing with ducks.

What are the challenges involved with that?

We had ducks that we used in Sydney, but there are a couple of ducks now at the Malthouse that – look, obviously the challenges are that its completely unpredictable as to what they’re going to do onstage, you know? But I guess it adds another sort of element of danger and spontaneity on stage that’s a lot of fun. The ducks are never in danger, you know what I mean, but it doesn’t really care too much about the script, or clucking over one your lines.

You’re old mates with Toby Schmitz. What’s it like to share the stage with the history you have together (Schmitz and Leslie were housemates after graduation from their respective acting schools), and how much leeway do you have with one another when it comes to feedback or critique of each others work?

We’ve always been really sort of supportive of each others work, and I guess the great thing with this play is that we’re playing guys who are really old friends, who haven’t seen each other in eighteen years. So, the obvious temptation there is to get on stage and just play Ewan and Toby. But it then becomes about the fact that we haven’t seen each other in eighteen years and we’re trying to reconnect and we’ve become very different people from when we last saw each other. He becomes a really sort of exciting person to be doing that with, because although we’re playing people that are so much different to ourselves, there is so much history there that we can sort of secretly feed into it.

What’s the roadmap for you beyond The Wild Duck? Do you have signposts through the year of stuff that’s coming up?

I shot a film called Dead Europe that I did right after Hamlet. It was shot over in Europe, so I kind of secretly went off and I was really stoked to be a part of that, and I loved the novel, so I literally… I mean, we finished Hamlet on a Saturday night, and I flew to Sydney on the Sunday and started rehearsals on the Monday, and we rehearsed for two weeks and then we immediately started shooting. It was an awesome experience. I play such a great role, from such a great novel, but I also got to go to Greece, Paris and Budapest and it was one of those ridiculous sort of jobs where you just go ‘you’re kidding me’.

When’s that scheduled for release?

I’ve no idea. I think they’ll certainly want it to come out this year, they’re editing it now. I’m going to do some voice, ADR stuff tonight so I’ll sort of get to see my first bits of it but hopefully it’ll be good!

Ewen, thanks so much for chatting to us today, I’m really looking forward to catching The Wild Duck. All the best for rehearsals and for your opening.

Not at all man. Hope you enjoy the show and hang around for a beer after.

The Wild Duck opens at the Malthouse February 17. Directed by Simon Stone, with Ewan Leslie, Toby Schmitz, Eloise Mignon and Anita Hegh. An edited version of this interview also appears at http://everguide.com.au/arts-and-culture/theatre-and-musicals/interview/ewen-leslie-wild-duck.aspx