The Age from Melbourne, Victoria, Australia • Page 14

14 THE AGE, Monday 13 April 1987 Arts Entertainment Edited by MICHAEL SHMITH A true mam of the cloth Full-frontal humor Comedy PETER WEINIGER Not a Papal Tour; Pamela Stephenson. Concert Hall (Thursday). up comics so often neglect to the detriment of their craft Then there is her Japanese geisha in which an unsuspecting member of the audience becomes the focal point of Ms Stephensons mischevous intent It is a routine that not only requires great skills in interpretation but because of the high risk involved demands exceptional confidence and control, two quali-ties that Ms Stephenson has in abundance. Ms Stephenson seems to thrive on danger and risks, which in the end sets her apart from so many of her contemporaries. It is when she seems to be about to go totally over the top that she is actually most in control, the hallmark of a great comedian.

This, plus the belief that almost nothing is sacred, enables her to turn the profain into the profound which makes an evening with Pamela Stephenson a very liberating experience. Beyond Chunderdome riously set up that they have no hope of coming across with any freshness. Humphries, who is a great solo comedian, seems to have no idea of working as part of a team. Most of the other actors are there only to have indignities heaped on them. Humphries's reputation may have some pulling power at the box office, but 'Les Patterson' deserves to make only petty cash on the local dung heap and none at all on the international market.

Why this film received financial assistance from the Australian Film Commission on the basis of an outline or completed script? should make an interesting post mortem. THE NEW ZEALAND cartoon 'Footrot Flats: The Dog's Tale' has a bucolic rough-house charm that should bring it considerable success. Director and co-writer Murray Ball is faithful to the spirit of his own comic strip, on which the film is based. It is set on and around a sheep farm run by Wal Footrot, dimwitted and good-natured, who blunders through each day with the help of his dog and a Maori youth. Life would be ideal but for the disruptive activities of his neighbors, the Murphys, who spend most of their time buzzing the district in a deer-stalking helicopter.

The film is jerkily plotted and tends to spin out incidents a rugby match, chaos in the shearing shed, a raft ride down a flooded river, and so forth for more than they are worth. But it has a consistent geniality; the drawings are good (much of the animation was done in Sydney), the entertaining characters boldly established and the dialogue humorously coarse without being foul. The whole thing is put together with affection and an endearing willingness to please. Care, energy and exactness It remains clean, lithe, well-composed music, not always of the highest importance perhaps, but stimulating and very pleasant as long as it is well played. On Saturday it was very well played indeed.

Iwaki directed with care, energy and exactness. Even so, there were moments of bass-heavy bias, in which major melodic work from the first violins was hard to pick up. We have every chance to become accustomed to this in the Concert Hall, and I imagine that Iwaki, with more occasion than visiting conductors, has often handed over a rehearsal to a deputy and gone to listen to the balance of parts, from, say, the circle. Yet the curious thing is that it is not an inevitable thing, because certain conductors have been able to avoid it by relocating the sections and also by damping down the heavier voices. At any rate, the orchestra reacted extremely well to Iwaki on Saturday, the woodwinds crisp and very sweet in the second movement the strings showing enormous bite and amplitude in their attack on the slow movement and the final allegro, the timpani excellent throughout.

The second of the Leonora Overtures of Beethoven, which began the program, was also very attractively played. The voices were locked together well and neatly, and Iwaki read the music with a good feeling for weight and speed, and a nice sense of climax. Only one rather heavy passage of trombone work with the pitch not altogether wholesome, rocked the balance of the ensemble. Christian Altenburger gave a graceful, classical and essentially Viennese performance as soloist in the Beethoven Violin Concerto. Securely poised in technique, immaculately straight-bowed and therefore vey pure in tone, he dwelt with concentration but without self-indulgence on the lyrical beauty of this music which is I suppose the best thing a modern soloist can do, since the music is no longer the test of a man's bravura.

Here again the orchestra turned in a highly attractive performance, with some notably precise and well-voiced woodwind chording. Iwaki directed with discretion, and it was particularly good to hear him sticking firmly to time in the two or three passages of the first movement where some conductors bring on a silly acceleration. more art, scholarship and modernity than they receive. His views, however, are not shared by all in the church, and many of the vestments being produced today carry the motifs which Father Wright says have outlived their purpose. As in the secular arts, the battle between the ancients and the moderns, the abstract and the traditional, is far from over.

The traditional symbols that most Christians see on priests' vestments of a Sunday are overdone, according to Father Wright, who criticised the "overuse of crosses and fishes and letters of the Greek alphabet an alpha and omega, on the end of a stole, no matter how beautifully embroidered, can be meaningless. Just slapping a fish on a chasuble means nothing it could be a fishmonger's apron. I think it Is ridiculous in 1987 to be making vestments that are copies of Edwardian or Victorian vestments. "The state of vestment design in this country with a few notable exceptions is simply not vestment design. Very little scholarship, either theological or artistic, is employed in design, and while the embroiderers' technique is good, no amount of technique can make up for lack of conception." His notion of the scope of materials and designs for vestments is limited only by the practicalities of embroidery and tailoring.

While Father Wright is keen on the use of traditional silk threads and jewellery, he says that metals, gold and silver leather, plastics and aluminium are not out of the question. He is enthusiastic about the use of hand-spun and unspun threads and fine wool. And he generally prefers abstract designs, using, as inspiration, the great Bible narratives such as the exodus, Christmas or Easter. Father Wright is particularly excited about the possibility of designing vestments for women who expect to be ordained as priests in the Anglican Church within a few years. While he does not see that women's vestments should be particularly different from those worn by men "a stole is a stole" (a stole is a long strip of material worn over the shoulders) he finds that women "are more exciting to work for, much more than Father Wright has made stoles for four of Victoria's women deacons.

"They (women) are much more imaginative." Theological arguments aside, perhaps the ordination of women as priests would mean some changes in the clerical wardrobes that Father Wright believes are in such dire need of renewal. Interview EDMUND DOOGUE FATHER Nigel Wright, former dressmaker and theatre wardrobe master and now vicar of Thomastown and Epping, is quite matter-of-fact in his condemnation of the state of the vestments worn by many Anglican priests. "A lot of vestments in Australia were made in the late Victorian and Edwardian period, or they are copies made in the 1930s and 1940s," says Father Wright, who has made vestments for many of Australia's Anglican bishops. "They are still in use, Sunday after Sunday, some of them filthy dirty and ragged threadbare." The art of liturgical clothing is too often neglected in Australia. Many people see it as a purely traditional art and therein lies a problem.

According to Father Wright, who dismisses worn-out vestments as a Paris couturier dismisses last season's fashions, many congregations assume (wrongly!) that vestments last hundreds of years, like the famous vestments preserved in some cathedrals and museums. So they leave their local vicar to persevere with vestments that are downright old-fashioned or even falling apart. Many oMhe vestments in use, says Father Wright, "should have been burnt or replaced because most of them are no good for restoration or "They (congregations) wouldn't do it with their own wardrobes you clean them out every two or three years and pitch them out if they are out of date, but expect the church to keep things in her wardrobe which are out of date and try to excite new faith or keep alive old faith with them. It's an unreal expectation for clothes." The ceremonial and vestments church worship seem a world apart from the more mundane world of secular clothes. But the skills required for secular and church clothing are often the same and Father Wright has bridged the gap between them.

It was an interest in church clothing that led Father Wright from the commercial world of the rag trade to the priesthood. His grandfather and father were Anglican clergymen, but, like many adolescents, he was determined not to follow the example of his forbears. Instead he went into the rag trade. "The reason I went into the rag trade was that I wanted to do the most outrageous thing I could think of. I got PAMELA STEPHENSON has a well-cultivated reputation for being outrageous, and after seeing her one-woman show I can only conclude that she is that and very much more.

Outrageous, she certainly is. She is also devastatingly funny, an absolutely superb character actress, who stretches the boundaries of comedy to its furthest extremities. She can be crude, rude, bitchy and thoroughly offensive, but never low rent or gratuitous. Throughout her show there is a razor-sharp intelligence at work; an intelligence and perception that refuses to bind to the dictates of conventional notions of good taste, in which anarchy and a finely honed sense of mischief are allowed to flourish. Her humor is a full-frontal attack on the cult of personalities, on the hype and nonsense that clutters up our perception of the world around us.

The essence of comedy is to expose the pomp and pretentions that bedevil us, and no one who I have seen for a long time does it quite as devastatingly as Ms Stephenson. On opening night, after a 40-minute delay, due to industrial problems, her show took a while to get into top gear. The first half was a mixed bag, partly due, I suspect, to her attempt to present topical, local material, not all of which hit the mark, and some of which she at times seemed uneasy with. The second half, however, was an absolute revelation, as she presented more familiar material that involved a series of character sketches ranging from Joan Collins as a child playing Mary in a Nativity play and Margaret Thatcher being abused by two punk dwarfs to a militant feminist who has just designed a non-sexist surf board. But there are two portrayals that really stand out.

Her Lady Di, in which she not only looks the part, but delivers a study of cringing, breathless stupidity that is finely balanced between satire and pathos. What is particularly im-presssive about this sketch is her use of body language, something that stand- Television 2E 1 Films NEIL JILLETT Les Patterson Saves the World (Hoyts); Footrot Flats (Hoyts). IN 'LES PATTERSON Saves the World' there are excrement jokes, genital jokes, pus jokes, breast jokes, lavatory jokes, AIDS jokes, herpes jokes, racist jokes, aphrodisiac jokes, spy jokes, anal jokes, booze jokes, tourism jokes, political jokes, sexist jokes, homosexual (male and female) jokes, flatulence jokes, even custard pie jokes. Indeed, the only type of joke it lacks is funny jokes. The script is by Diane Millstead anc" her husband, Barry Humphries, whr also stars as his two alter egos, Sir L(-f and Dame Edna.

Direction, if you can call it that, is blamed on George ('The Man from Snowy River') Miller. The sketchy, unimaginative plot concerns the efforts by Les (an Australian diplomat) and Edna (head of a touring peace delegation) to foil the scheme of a crazed Middle Eastern diplomat to gain control of the world by exporting lavatory seats infected with a form of AIDS. This film (suggested subtitle: 'Beyond Chunderdome: Limp Les I') seeks to take bad taste to new depths, but succeeds merely in being lumberingly gross. Verbal and sight gags, many of them worm-eaten antiques, are so labo 2KL Survey tunes in to SBS viewing habits Father Wright displays a cape he designed. sick of people asking if I was going to follow in my father's footsteps." But Father Wright admits he did have a strong interest in tailoring.

He spent three years in the silk department at Georges and then worked for dressmaker Heather May on Toorak Road. "I went for three weeks and stayed for three years. I worked for $40 a week and she taught me what she knew. It was a small workroom and we had to do everything. That was where I learnt most of my skills in the practical sense," says Father Wright, who also studied fashion, tailoring and textiles and was wardrobe master at St Martin's Theatre.

After making some vestments for the Anglican Church, Father Wright established his own business in the old Gas and Fuel building in Flinders Street, specialising in "contemporary liturgical He ran the business for five years and made a good living from it (he says there is still scope for people to make a living in Melbourne from the creation of vestments). At the same time he took up theology studies "because I thought it was important for lay people to be informed" and eventually he applied to Archbishop Woods to be considered for ordination. He was ordained six years ago and has since made some vestments and lectured in liturgical design at the Prahran College of TAFE when his duties as vicar have permitted. He believes that as instruments to communicate faith, vestments deserve Twc leleSCODe BARBARA HOOKS long held belief rather than a surprise to SBS and its supporters. THE possibilities are endless a public telephone has been vying for acting honors (not hard) in Ten's suburban soaper, 'Neighbors'.

Telecom talked the producers into developing a couple of anti-vandalism scenarios. In the first Jim Robinson gamely came to the rescue of a public telephone about to be clobbered by two crowbar-wielding vandals. On Friday night they got their just deserts, which delighted Ramsay Street's resident philanthropist no end. Said Scott to his dad: "They got them. Great!" "Yes," says Jim.

"They caught them red-handed trying to wreck another phone box." Rejoined Scott: "Why do they do those things? It's so dumb." "They're dumb all right," replied Jim. "And with a bit of luck they'll spend some time thinking about it in the clink." A good idea notwithstanding, the phone got the better script AMERICAN mail order television is into everything these days. One hot-gos-pelling program even has its own hardsell spots on Sunday mornings, a sort of Jesus Christ Super Store. Latest in the home-shopping craze is a cable program devoted to exclusive fashion apparel, cosmetics and accessories. Due to begin in July on 21 cable stations around the country, it hopes to capture a few of the billions fashion-conscious Americans spend on clothes featured in dozens of catalogues each year.

Interesting concept, but there are those who believe fashion is hard to sell on TV: a case of never mind the quality, you can't even feel the width. By BARBARA The David Collection: The (10, 7.30pm) Vidal in 730pm) 7.00 Atom Ant Cartoons. (R) 7.30 Tom and Jerry. (R) 8.00 Leave It To Beaver. (R) 8.30 Pebbles and Bam Bam.

(R) 9.00 Catch Us If You Can. (R) 9.30 TV Education. Career in Natural TherapiesSound Engineer. 10.00 Romper Room. Pre-school series.

1055 Home Update. 11.00 Eleven AM. News, reports and interviews. Afternoon 12.00 FILM. The Catamount Killing.

1974 drama, starring Horst Buchholz and Ann Wedgeworth. (AO) (R) 2.00 Cop shop. Australian drama series. (PGR) (R) 3.00 When the Boat Comes hi. British drama series.

(PGR) (R) 4.00 Wombat (C) 4.30 Lassie. (C) (R) 5.00 Wheel of Fortune. Game show. 5.30 Have a Go. Game show.

The Golden Years of Television (9, 1135pm) TV stars as follows: worth considering excellent not to be missed Music KENNETH HINCE Melbourne Symphony Orchestra: Second Red Series Concert Soloist Christian Altenburger. Conductor: Hiroyuki Iwaki. Concert Hall (8 pm Saturday, tonight, tomorrow.) IT IS hard to think of the Fourth Symphony of Carl Nielsen as being more than 70 years old. Some of its sound and some of the characteristics of its writing would still have been quite valid in the 1930s and 1940s. 5.00 Holiday Island.

(PGR) (R) 6.00 Daybreak. Local and international news. 7.00 Good Morning Australia. News and information program. 9.00 Good Morning Melbourne.

Interviews and information program. 10.00 Fat Cat and Friends. Pre-school series. (R) 10.30 Another World. (PGR) 11.30 News Daywatch.

Afternoon 12.00 Pot Luck. Variety talent series. (S) 1.00 The Rockford Files. US drama series. (PGR) (R) 2.00 FILM.

Burning Rage. 1984 drama, starring Barbara Mandrell and Tom Wopat (PGR) (R) 4.00 Andrew Daddo Presents 4 JO Simon Townsend's Wonderworld. 5.00 The Brady Bunch. (R) 5.30 Perfect Match. Quiz series, hosted by Cameron Daddo and Kerrie Friend.

Evening 6.00 News, Sport, Weather. 7.00 Neighbours. Australian drama series set in a suburban street. Helen is surprised by a visitor to Ramsay Street Henry finds himself caught in a domestic drama. (S) 7.30 David Johnston Collection: The Flying Vet Tonight, veterinary surgeon David Bradley, who boasts the largest veterinary practice in the world cattle stations which cover thousands of square kilometres of Northern Australia.

(R) 8.30 FILM. The Rose. 1979 drama about a rock star who turns to drugs and alcohol when she becomes overwhelmed by the pressures of fame. It stars Bette Midler and Alan Bates. (AO) (R) 11.05 News update.

11.20 Call to Glory. US drama series about American fliers during the 1960s. (PGR) 12.20 Nightshirt Rock show, hosted by David White. (AO) All-night transmission. Evening 5.30 Golf.

Direct telecast of the fourth day's play in the US Masters Tournament, from Augusta, Georgia. 8.30 Today. 9.00 Here's Humphrey. 10.00 The Young Doctors. (R) 10.30 The Sullivan.

(R) 11.30 News. Afternoon 12.00 The Midday Show with Ray Martin. 1.30 Days of Our Lives. (PGR) 2.30 The Young and The Restless. (PGR) 3.30 General Hospital.

(PGR) 4.00 C'Mon Kids. (C) 5.00 The Bugs Bunny Show. (R) 5.30 Say G'Day. Game show. Evening 6.00 News, Sport, Weather.

6.30 Willesee. Current affairs. 7.00 Sale of The Century. 7.30 The Cosby Show. US comedy series.

(R) 8.00 Easy Street US comedy series. Ricardo is invited to perform with a singing group. 8.30 Dynasty. US drama series. Blake and Dex's plans to free Caress from prison succeed; Sammy Jo is pregnant with Clay's baby.

(PGR) 9.30 The Colbys. US drama series. Sable is determined to find out what is behind Channing and Fallon's fear of motherhood. (PGR) 10.30 Newsbreak. 10.35 Motor Racing.

Highlights of the 1987 Brazilian Grand Prix. 11.35 Golden Years of Television. A nostalgic look at television programs. Tonight, Green Hornet and The Samurai. 12.50 FILM.

The File on Thelma Jordan. 1949 drama. (PGR) 7.00 Learning Network. 8.00 Today's Special. 8.30 Sesame Street 9.30 Play School.

(S) 10.00 Hunter. 10.20 Words Fail Me. 10.45 Prima. 11.00 Storytelling. 11.20 Rip, Slide, Turn.

11.40 Australian Studies. (S) Afternoon 12.00 Heartlands. (R) 12.30 Advanced Level Studies. 12.50 Spacewatch. 1.00 Masterworks from the Worlds Great Museums.

1.10 Come and Get It 1.15 Detective. 1.35 Let's Go Maths. 1.45 Corduroy. 2.00 The Strangest Voyage. 3.00 Sesame Street 3.55 Thomas the Tank Engine and His Friends.

4.00 Play School. (S) 4.30 Sooty Show. 4.52 Mr Men. 5.00 The Campbells: Magic Medicine. New Canadian series.

5.30 You Can't Do That on TV. Evening 6.00 Inspector Gadget (R) 6.25 Come and Get It 6.30 EastEnders. BBC soapie. 7.00 News. 7.30 The 7.30 Report Current affairs program.

8.00 Fawny Towers. Return of the BBC comedy series about a manic hotel proprietor. Basil is outraged when an unmarried couple want to book a room in the hotel. (PGR) (S) 8.35 Yes, Minister. BBC comedy series.

Jim Hacker becomes involved in a row over a company's plans to manufacture a chemical at its Merseyside factory. (R) (S) 9.05 Four Corners. ABC current affairs series. 10.05 The Dingo Principle. Second of a 10-part political and social satire series.

10.35 News. 10.40 The Burrows Collection: Miles Davis Live in Europe. 11.25 Close. HOOKS Johnston Flying Vet Venice (SBS, 2.45 FILM. The Cracksman.

1963 comedy-drama. (R) 'Paradise' lost nothing on TV Review MICHAEL SHMITH (RED has obtained the truth." someone said at the start of the final episode of 'Paradise Postponed' (Channel 2 at 7.30 pm). He certainly did; but it was truth established on a history of lies: of adultery, illegitimacy, guilt blackmail and class treachery. The Reverend Simeon Simcox, as it turned out bad had an affair with Lady Grace Fanner and fathered her child, Charlotte. Charlotte grew up to marry the odious Leslie Titmuss who, as it was revealed last night was the Reverend Simcox's son-in-law.

So why did Simcox leave his fortune to Titmuss? Out of further guilt arising after Charlotte's death at a nuclear disarmament rally. This revelation was just the beginning. What happened then? Well, the Simcox Brewery shares were found to be worthless, which was worth it for the look on Leslie's face when he found out and he was found to have lied about Charlotte's CND membership. He was challenged by his local branch but got out of it of course, by delivering two calculated, emotional speeches, each exactly the same. It was David Threlfall's Titmuss, with his upwardly-mobile manner, ever-developing accent and amazing sneer, who was the most memorable person of the whole series.

'Paradise Postponed' has been some of the most enthralling television I can recall. Enthralling, because almost everyone depicted in John Mortimer's plot defied the laws of predictable drama; heroes and villains, but which was really Only one complaint: surely, when credits with sensitive music are run, the ABC could show discretion by avoiding the wretched spruiking voice-overs that have ruined the closing moments of 'Paradise Postponed' each week. QBS-TV staff have been popping the bubbly and muttering "told Their glee follows results of a recent McNair Anderson survey which indicated the actual number of people watching the multi-cultural network was being dramatically understated in the official TV ratings because it was transmitting on the UHF band. It found the viewer share among people born overseas (English and non-English speaking) was five times higher than the audience share regularly recorded for the network. The report said SBS figures were compiled on an overall viewer basis when only 50 per cent of homes in Sydney and Melbourne could pick up the channel, compared with 100 per cent reached by the commercial networks and the ABC which broadcast on VHF.

"As SBS-TV is the only service transmitting solely on UHF it suffers the comparative disadvantage of having its ratings and share performances expressed as percentages of total audience potentials." it said. "The actual percentage performance among those able to receive SBS-TV is not always clearly apparent." The survey indicated that of all households capable of receiving UHF, 20 per cent of all potential viewers, 50 per cent of all overseas-born Australians and 30 per cent of English speaking, overseas-born viewers tuned to SBS in an average week. The discrepancies, McNair Anderson said, could be attributed to the horizontal drop in. drop out nature of SBS viewing patterns compared to the vertical tune in and stay for the night nature of commercial viewing patterns. For example, if 50,000 Greeks cross to SBS at 8pm.

followed by 50,000 Italians at 9pm, the survey will register only 50.000 viewers for those two programs when 100,000 have watched in reality. The news came as confirmation of a Afternoon 4.30 Kaleidoscope. 5.00 The Electric Company. 5.30 The Noise. Evening 6.00 Brookside.

6.30 World News. 7.00 Dance With Me. 7.30 Vidal in Venice. First of a new two-part British documentary presented by American novelist and screenwriter Gore Vidal on the rise and fall of the Venetian Empire. Tonight Vidal sets out to trace his own Venetian ancestry, the origins of the city and its Mediterranean empire.

8.30 Soccer. A review of yesterday's West End League matches, presented by Les Murray. 9.00 9 O'Clock. News and current affairs program. 9.30 FILM.

The Consequence. 1977 German drama which studies the relationship between an actor imprisoned for having homosexual relations with a minor and the teenage son of one of his jailors. (R) 11.10 Vox Populi. (R) 11.40 Close. 6.00 News, Sport, Weather.

Tatts 2 results. Draw 872. 7.00 Terry Willesee Tonight New current affairs program. 7.30 A Country Practice. Australian drama series set in a NSW country town.

Andrew McPherson, an old friend of Alex's comes to the valley for a break. 8.30 The Equalizer. US drama series. McCall enters the world of drugs and gang violence to help a high school student who unknowingly becomes involved with the mob. With Edward Woodward.

(AO) 9.30 The Professionals. British drama series. Cowley receives a bomb threat which proves not to be a hoax, but a legacy from a criminal who once infiltrated C15. (AO) (R) 10.40 Newsworid. 11.30 In Loving Memory.

British comedy series. (PGR) (R) 12.00 News Overnight All-night news transmission, including Today. 4.40 Bonanza. (PGR) (R) 5.30 Ask the Leyland Brothers. the cammmoMm ME XT WEEK pSmfewpIofle WILL PROBABff UP, So make sure you get your copy of Thursday's Age.