Lulu by GW Pabst at Belvoir Street Theatre; The Sinking of the Rainbow Warrior by the Song Company and AustraLYSIS at Maritime Museum, Darling Harbour; and The Beatification of Area Boy by Wole Soyinka at the Seymour Centre
Reviewed by Jorge Sotirios
In his last leg of tenure as director of the Sydney Festival, Anthony Steel has rounded up an imaginative selection of theatre. Although not all his choices were fully realised, there were great moments to be savoured, especially when you consider the bland standard fare that has gripped Sydney in the past year.
Lulu
Belvoir Streets production of Lulu, directed by former Los Trios Ringbarkus comic Neil Gladwin, was an innovative piece of theatre. Adapted from Pabsts film of the same name, Gladwin sought to create a similar piece but contoured to the needs of a theatre space: There was a deliberate attempt to capture the dark ambience of the streets, misted in fog and lighted in chiaroscuro.
Pabsts film was a silent one and Gladwin attempted the same. Dispensing with all forms of spoken dialogue, the ensemble conveyed the narrative via gesture and movement in rhythm to a pre-recorded musical score. The result was a choreography that incorporated numerous comic routines of the silent film era such as entering and exiting doors, pratfalls and extravagant facial expressions.
Unfortunately, for all the athletic ability of the cast, with Kate Agnew and Conrad Page a highlight, something was lacking. Perhaps it was the political dimension associated with the Lulu legend. The sub-text of the dark soul of Germany, caught between the Great War and the nightmare of Hitlers ascendancy in the 1930s, was effaced from this performance.
While playing with certain stylistic features of film is all well and good, for there to be a gravity there has to be a connection to the social and political undercurrents that gave rise to and shaped the style of that era. German directors who worked in Hollywood during the 1920s and '30s (such as Pabst, von Sternberg, Fritz Lang) created a particular style to convey the anxieties and terrors of their age. For them art was not a game.
The Sinking of the Rainbow Warrior
Closer to home, the Rainbow Warrior affair acts as a reference point for our own times. In July 1985, Greenpeaces ship Rainbow Warrior was bombed in New Zealand, killing photographer Franco Pereira. This international terrorist act was condoned worldwide.
The French government reluctantly took responsibility for the attack and sentenced Captain Prieur and Major Mafart. However their sentence was a joke — they were feted as national heroes and spent their two-year sentences on the French base of Hao Atoll, a prison run like Club Med.
Given that there is little room for ambiguity and shading of character, opera was probably the best form to use for this story. The musical component, provided by AustraLYSIS, was excellent. The mood had an edginess that filled the outdoor arena and the imaginative use of space engrossed the audience.
Backgrounded by the HMAS Pinafore, the action took place on the wharf and a moored barge, with the audience seated on the rim of Darling Harbour. Director Nigel Kellaway made creative use of the environment, a space which provided some stunning images including singers emerging from port holes in raised life boats, French officials arriving on stage in a dinghy, shadows cast on warehouses in the far background and, the most sublime, a go-go dancer frantically in motion high up on one of the towers of the warship, a la Apocalypse Now.
While the spectacle was enjoyable, it was difficult to follow the story. The ghost of the murdered photographer narrated the capture of the French spies, their conviction and subsequent holiday courtesy of the French state. A sub-theme of the disastrous effects of French nuclear testing in the Pacific, expressed by a Tahitian womans testimony of the tragic effects unleashed from Moruroa, didnt truly gel and appeared superimposed.
Didactic theatre is always in danger of being one dimensional. Still, given the paucity of political theatre of any kind, The Sinking of the Rainbow Warrior deserves a chance to be seen by a wider audience.
The Beatification of Area Boy
Wole Soyinkas The Beatification of Area Boy was the highlight of the Sydney Festival. The generosity of spirit and life-affirmation in this satire reveals how calcified much Australian theatre is. Given the brutal and murderous subject matter of Area Boy, this is quite an achievement.
The "area boy" (Anthony Ofeogbu) is a synthesis of order and chaos. In a position of authority (he works outside a plaza), he is also something of a petty crim, administering rackets in his community of thieves. This is relevant since the whole of Nigeria is governed by greater thieves — the military government which annulled free elections in June 1993.
This is Soyinkas portrait of Lagos, an urban mosaic that is at times poetic and magical, and consistently humorous. The area boy acts as the fulcrum for much of the controlled chaos. The variety of characters that surround the marketplace — a barber, a lawyer, a mother and her child — adds to the political nature of the play: Everyone, big or small, employed or unemployed, is affected by the currents of politics.
Soyinkas satire carries echoes from Ancient Greek theatre: The use of a podium from which the drama is generated, the marketplace, off-stage happenings, the unities of time and space.
In many respects, Area Boy resembles a seminal Greek play of the 1950s, Kambanellis The Courtyard of Miracles. That play dealt with a community at work and play as its characters were politicised, to the left and right, by post-war history. Area Boy too is filled with miracles, with Soyinka drawing upon the tribal traditions of Yoruba (whether in the form of a man losing his genitals, or the collusion of a false dawn with that of an army-ignited blaze of fire).
A brilliant depiction of a wedding reception reveals that Soyinka is as much comedian as poet, an orchestrator of symbols, motifs and jokes.
As to the effectiveness of this satire, to see the Nigerian military chiefs as clowns and goons is indeed funny (and close to the mark), but whether it has led to anything more substantial is debatable. Soyinka would counter that, in depicting "the filth, the energy and enterprising nature of Nigeria", he is not only painting a portrait of his beloved Lagos, he is also indicating the resilience of its inhabitants.
Area Boy achieves this effortlessly, and full credit must go to its theatrical cast and musicians, and to director Jude Kelly. For those in search of deeper polemics, go to Soyinkas recently released book of criticism, The Open Sore of a Continent: A Personal Narrative of the Nigerian Crisis.