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The Sydney Morning Herald from Sydney, New South Wales, Australia • Page 12

Location:
Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
Issue Date:
Page:
12
Extracted Article Text (OCR)

12 Arts THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD MONDAY, OCTOBER 6. 1997 the festival of the A fL a I nxo) dreaming 111 1 1 mi 1 11 1. 11 11 1 1 1 1 11 iiiiiiiimiiiii 1111 mil 11 11 111 1 jmiii 1 hi 11 mm 1 i.iii up iwiiipiiW! i iiiiiiihiimiwi 111 smimiiini iiiiihi.ii.hiii win mm mmmiwnmm tgi. i i i vv- -sv 1 NGUNDALEHLA GODOTGAI (WAITING FOR GODOT) Bangarra Studio Theatre, October 3 By COLIN ROSE THE final opening of The Festival of the Dreaming, Ngunda-lehla Godotgai (Waiting for Godot), is also the most ambitious and a notable first. I remember two points from the opening night's introductory remarks made by Pat O'Shane on behalf of The James Joyce Foundation: first, this is the first time that a European play has been translated into an Aboriginal language (Bundja-lung); and second, Ngundalehla Godotgai, she suggested, should be seen as a we should appreciate the efforts of its creators and forgive the shakiness of some of its stagecraft On opening night I left at interval.

Inside the sweaty theatre, after an unseasonably warm Sydney day, it felt as if the audience had been transported bodily to summer in the Bundja-lung country of NSWs Northern Rivers and south-east Queensland. I saw the play in its entirety the following evening and the first point I'd make is that with a day's more work the stagecraft was sharper all round. Ngundalehla Godotgai is performed wholly in Bundjalung with English surtitles projected on the back wall. On opening night, the surtitles were so poorly synced with the action that big chunks of text whizzed past at an unreadable rate. This problem had been fixed by the next performance.

But I'm shying away from what I really want to say about Ngundalehla Godotgai, which is: I can't figure out why the project was undertaken in the first place. To translate Godot into Bundjalung and then back into English seems to me to be an exercise in sheer perversity. I can readily I vl Ira mi 1 I Godot) bubbles away so mellif luously and the rhythm of speech and movement of the Bundjalung performers is so laid back that the overall effect is like drowning in honey. In her program notes, Mason suggests that Godot is a critique of the western concept of time which benefits from a reading by "Aboriginal people who don't have this artificial sense of Sidestepping the cross-cultural crevasse over what is and isn't I can't agree with either half of that statement If is that it's just not There's a perceptual lag, course, in mentally combining and surtitles which tends the humour but, more this, the Bundjalung language itself is problematic for the It bubbles away so melliflu-ously, and the rhythm of speech movement of the Bundja lung performers is so laid back, that the overall effect is like drowning in honey. Beckett's steely rictus grin is supplanted by a squishy smiley face.

Call it the Everest Syndrome: there will always be people who want to climb Everest because it's the tallest mountain and, in the same way, there will always McGovern and Colin Duckworth; also the actors Bradley Byquar (Estragon), Anthony Gordon (Vladimir), Roy Gordon (Pozzo), and Max Cullen (as a whiter-than-white Lucky). They've slogged up the mountain for their place in the history books. Is that enough for the audience? be people who want to work over Godot because it's the 20th century's most famous play. But, as if it wasn't enough for director Clara Mason to make her attempt on the summit of modernist literature without the oxygen of comedy, she's also left her intellectual pitons back at base camp. the Bundjalung nation has anything to say about Godot, other than that it's not funny, then it remains obscure at least to this European in this production.

I must acknowledge the efforts of Godofs Bundjalung translator, Mick Walker, and the input of Beckett experts Barry MUSIC Cosmos and pathos at the SSO Reel I oan of Art 20TH CENTURY ORCHESTRA Concert Hall, October 3. By GORDON KERRY WHEN Auden described ancient Greek religion as "mad camp" he might well have been thinking of its reincarnation in a work like Scriabin's Prometheus: The Poem of Fire. Back in 1909, Scriabin couldn't have known that light shows and wordless choruses would become the staple of advertising, Hollywood and dance parties, or that the Olympian Jr-" Ngundalehla Godotgai (Waiting for imagine a Russian translation of Godot, for example, being performed (often) by Russians for (many) Russians but in Bundjalung? Samuel Beckett labelled Godot a tragicomedy, although it's always struck me as more richly comic than tragic and Ngundalehla Godotgafs greatest disap myths could end up as Disney cartoons or Super Hero Saturdays. At this end of the century it is a little hard to suspend one's cynicism: Scriabin's 20-minute essay in musical theosophy occasionally conjures images of Charlton Heston parting the Red Sea, and Scriabin in ecstasy sometimes suggests Debussy on Prozac. As long as you don't take the message too seriously, it's all good fun.

Scriabin's slightly deranged genius found an almost ideal interpretation in Roger Woodward's 1111 30. The Palace Hotel 31. Phat Boys Thai 32. Picnic Cafe 33. Rozelle Fish Bowl 34.

Sarantos 35. Serendipity 36. Simmone Logue Fine Food Co. 37. Simon Johnson 38.

Sweet Sensation 39. Three Five Seven King 40. Tyrrell's Vineyards 41. Yalumba Tent, which this year will be support Clifford Wallace Agency. CITYWEST pointment funny.

of action to dull than play. and IjestmciJ Homing 5cralb TASTE OF GOOD LIVING 88 FILM i ne A quiet force in Australian cinema is finally being honoured by her peers. Lauren iARTi reports! "HE story goes that when ever the Australian hum Society in London needed to fill its coffers in the '70s, it would screen Paddington Lace. Queues formed around the corner. They loved it.

And into one such crowd came Peter Weir, taking questions. When asked who wrote Lace, his reply was: "A housewife." "Now, I was directing films when Peter Weir was in short pants" laughs Joan Long, "housewife" in question. Characteristically, Long is gracious. She covers for him, explaining that although she began working at the Commonwealth Film Unit back in 1947 it or she took 10 years off to raise kids. When Weir met her working at the same place, he didn't see her already packed resume.

"He didn't know. I mean I love Peter and I admire his films greatly, but that was a typical kind of attitude." The typical attitude about Joan Long now, however, is summed up by Babe director Chris Noonan: "She's the nearest thing we've got to royalty in the Australian film industry." Her work has spanned decades. She has distinguished herself as a writer, producer, historian, activist and invisible support to many, including Noonan. "She saw the first film I made, as a school kid," says the director, who previously had never thought of a film career. "But she gave me a list 'Here's what you should I followed her instructions pretty much to the letter and ended up at Film Australia.

"That's typical of many stories about her," he says. "She's selfless, genuine and generous she's touched a lot of people's lives." Says Margaret Pomeranz, film critic for SBS's The Movie Show: "There are many projects where she may not have had a specific role, but she played a part in her support of people. She was never threatened by the idea that someone might take off and be brilliant "She has towered over the new wave of Australian filmmaking," roughly pegged to the 1970s, Pomeranz says. Now Long is receiving the country's first Venus Award a hall-of-fame tribute from Women in Film and Television (WIFT). Gillian Armstrong will present the honour at a luminary-laden black-tie dinner next week.

Her achievements are astonishing. She wrote the script for Caddie, the 1976 Helen Morse Jack Thompson performance with the Sydney Symphony under Diego Masson. The orchestra's handling of the huge variety of orchestral colour was wonderful. As much as the piece, oddly enough, is of chamber music delicacy, there were numerous instances of fine solo playing especially from John Harding (violin) and Daniel Mendelow (trumpet), and the Philharmonia Motet Choir oohed and aahed with cosmic joie, as one does. In Woodward's performance there was no lapse into the bombast which might easily mar the work's often massive, imperious keyboard writing.

Occasionally upper register grace notes sounded a little like clusters, but by and large the interpretation was by turns animated, joyful, mysteriously veiled and strangely charmed. Like Scriabin, Australian composer Georges Lentz uses music to express a very personal spirituality and cosmology. Caeli enarrant I refers to Psalm 19 (the heavens declare the glory of God, the vaults of the firmament proclaim his handiwork), but the music takes its stimulus from contemporary astronomy and Tibetan Buddhism as much as from traditional Judeo-Christian sources. The piece, recently awarded the Paul Lowin prize, shows a composer whose knowledge of orchestral sonority and instrumental capability is sensitive and profound, as we might expect: Lentz is also an associate concert master of the orchestra. The technically assured scoring allows for forays into distinctive sound-worlds like the Tibetan chant-inspired passages for trumpets and cymbals in the second movement.

Despite describing the "situation of man" as "a grain of dust in the midst of the vastness of Lentz's piece has at its heart a lengthy and very beautiful cor anglais solo (played superbly by Alexandre Oguey) suggesting that man, if you'll pardon the expression, is the measure of all things. Lentz's overall conception, however, requires the audience to contemplate time-scales and the placement of events which clearly stem from his own meditations on the cosmos, and which are not necessarily self-evident in the music. Much as I admired the craft and sincerity of the piece, I occasionally felt Pascal's terror, rather than Messiaen's joy, at the infinities of space. Between the two essays on the cosmos, we had the apparent contrast of Arvo Part's Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten for strings and bells, played wonderfully. It was a salutary piece of programming to include a work which has a more human subject bereavement and commemoration and which can discover genuine pathos in the most simple of musical means.

5 4 wv ri ill" 'Ti up i 2Lii u. 4i. Ji 5l JlrMlVjTrJEaE-is yiz mm educational films she was assigned. "I did one film that I quite liked, which was my own idea a little 10-minute documentary on the small boats in Sydney Harbour." In Harbour was shown at the first Melbourne and Sydney film festivals. "I nearly died when I saw it again," she says.

"It had some good bits and some not so good bits, let's say." She went on to win three AWGIE awards for best scripts, for Paddington Lace as well as her acclaimed histories of Australian cinema, Tlie Pictures That Moved and Tlie Passionate Industry. Lifelong friend and film historian Judy Adamson explains the work Long put into these docos: "There were no secondary sources. She had to go back through everything. She read the minutes of the Royal Commission from the 1920s which were 1,700 pages long in her holidays. "She interviewed people who'd acted in films of the '20s.

She started nowhere, knowing nothing, with no prepared sources, and her work was so fine that you did not even notice it" Long was a natural activist, too. "Everyone could see we would never have a feature-film industry unless we had government finance," she says. "Even when the government granted the principle, a lot of things had to be sorted out there was a lot of work to be done. "Philip Adams always claims that he and Barry Jones were the ones that got Prime Minister John Gorton's ear well, they did a good job, they were the lobbyists, but underneath was this big grassroots movement They didn't just do it out of the blue." Of 99 witnesses to a 1972 government inquiry, Long was one of only two women. The man next to her thought she was a secretary.

But it was the inquiry chairman who took note; she was president of the Writers' Guild. Long still puts in individual submissions to every inquiry going. "I suppose my university taught me the value of historical perspective and individual action within that "And it's just my nature," she winks. "I like a bit of a fight!" Although she says she's retired, Long is writing and co-producing a television series about three Sydney sisters who made silent films. "It will be played by a leading Sydney actress but I can't say who right now," she says.

And the world needs more films made by women, a feisty Long contends. "If not 50 per cent, at least 40 per cent should be made by women." She's practical. She knows there's housewifery to be done. "You've got to think there will always be a number of women out of action at any one time with child rearing. But it would be great if things were evened up.

Yes, 40 per cent would be good." The 1997 Sydney Morning Herald Taste of Good Living in Pyrmont held in conjunction with City West Development Corporation will be held on Saturday, 1 1 October between 1 1 am 4pm. The 1997 festival will be held in and around the newly refurbished Pyrmont Bay Park between the National Maritime Museum and the temporary casino on the harbour foreshore. TASTE OF GOOD LIVING IN PYRMONT Showcasing the very finest Australian produce, providores, restaurants and wineries, the Taste of Good Living in Pyrmont will tantalise and titillate your taste buds. Stalls this year include: 1 Arrowfield 2. Bar Luca 3.

Becks Beer 4. Benjamin's Roof 5. Bills 6. Bilsons 7. Botanica Brasserie 8.

Brown Brothers 9. Cassegrain 10. The Culinary Edge 11. Darling Mills 1 2. David Jones 1 3.

Domaine Chandon 14. Edna's Table 15. Emporio Armani 16. Federation Sausages 17. Fiddlers Creek 18.

Food by Mode 19. Frankland EstateYarraman Rd 20. Gavagna Brothers 2 1 Glace Ice Cream 22. Horseshoe Vineyards 23. JJ McWilliam 24.

Just Squeezed Juices 25. Lion Premium Beer Co. 26. La Mensa 27. Montana 28.

Nice Cream 29. Ottima Cucina Joan Long "I like a bit of a fight!" hit Caddie put a woman at centre stage a jemale little Aussie battler. "It was brave," Pomeranz says rapturously. "It set a course that Australian films were not going to follow American formulas. It was an attempt to follow our own culture." Long became a feature film producer: Tlie Picture Show Man, Puberty Blues, Silver City and Emerald City are all her credits.

But her work began in documentary. Well, in doco administration. "I had to begin as a secretary, much to my horror," Long says. "I had to do a bit of urging, but I finally got across to the cutting rooms. Which of course was an important place to learn the grammar of film." A history graduate, Long and her career choice seemed peculiar to her uni friends.

"There was an intellectual snobbery about films," she recalls. "It wasn't something you did, it was something you were interested iq." Photograph by BEN RUSHTON She got the job by telling the producer that, "film was the art of the 20th He was stunned. "In the late 1940s that was not a typical attitude at all," she laughs. "Whereas everybody knows it now." One day word reached the cutting room that Canberra had cut film funds. The salaries were safe, but there was no money for film.

So the three "girls" were asked to write scripts. "We each had to choose an Australian explorer and write a film about the person. The other two got in first and chose the best ones, I think," laughs Long. "I had to put up with Kennedy, who explored Queensland." Nevertheless, according to a friend, Long's was the only script to show a real understanding of how films were made. When the producer read it, he told Long to go out and make films.

"Doing my own stuff was terribly satisfying," she remembers, even though she had to do whatever Meet food and wine experts at The Taste ed by the Sydney Seafood School and the All food and wine will be sold via $2 vouchers. Entertainment will be provided by the Starfish Club with special guests Bill O'Riordan, Darren Paul and Fiona.

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Pages Available:
2,319,638
Years Available:
1831-2002