The Sydney Morning Herald from Sydney, New South Wales, Australia • Page 10

Page 10 The Sydney Morning Herald, Tuesday, July 5, 1983 nsxss nam EramgresaHRiniEKra1 Fantasy world of Jack Ritchie Life in a submarine-in all mm-. its graphic tediousness Tight budget and lack of space pose challenge to stage designer By PRUE CHARLTON The.m. Penrith Submariner, by Tom McLcnNehali Directed by Arthur Dkki Dcrigncd by Jennie Mulr CMl Alan David Lee, Anthony Inger- lent, Terry Brady, John Sauoden, Duug WljjiM Till July M. appreciate deafness a bit more at the end." Jack Ritchie finds this all much more satisfying (if less lucrative) than designing clothes. He admits that he is tempted to do just one parade of clothes too expensive for anyone to buy.

"There'd be nothing under $1,000," muses, "I'd design them purely for visuality." But I suspect he'd rather be offered a stage designing job with the same opportunities for visuality and the same lack of financial restraints. Right now, for instance, Griffin is desperately trying to scrape together $15,000 to take to Singa- fore its production of the Steve Spears' play When They Send Me Three and Fourpence. The invitation from the Arts Festival there includes the designer but not the fare. In the meantime, Jack Ritchie's happy to tread in the mythical if tatty footsteps of the Nimrod Theatre which also began its vibrant life in the same building in Nimrod Street, Kings Cross. And Jack's very happy to work with the Griffin company, whose policy of staging mostly new Australian plays means for him they are one of the few theatre companies around who are committed to doing something other than surviving.

By JEREMY ECCLES THE SIGN saying Joe's Seafood Restaurant flashed in three shades of eye-catching neon. A complimentary Pies and Peas logo with a giant hamburger dominated the other side of the stage also winking. And then, flying in from above, a death-sized crucifix, strong enough to hold a man, but lit internally by more neons, shattered the audience's peace of mind. A fantasy? Yes because those are just some of the things that the designer Jack Ritchie would like to do for the production of A Couple of Broken Hearts, opening at the Stables Theatre tonight but for many reasons, can not. There's the cost for one thing and the theatre itself for another.

With design budgets just creeping into three figures, Jack Ritchie knows, after 11 productions at the Stables Theatre, that he'll never be able to make his shows look like The Sydney Theatre Company's in the Opera House. Phil Noyce, fresh from the film set, wanted mirrors all round for a one-act play in the 1981 Shorts season. The design budget was then just $50 so he got some bars of white light on the walls. 20 square metres surrounded by tiers of seats that soon reach the rafters, that is literally true. And it's why nothing larger than a cockroach could fly in from above and also why Jack Ritchie would like just a little more money.

''Just with the audience so close, it would be nice to get away from tackiness in the set and costumes," he says. Jack Ritchie admits to being more than a little nervous about the arrival of the author Barry Dickens just before the play opens. "On the phone, he's been very concerned about the visual side of the production I hope he is happy." In fact, the play's text lays down pretty precise instructions, and the designer's major task is to provide an air of reality to a scene which becomes progressively less so. For instance, religious analogies start with the loaves and fishes and end up anarchically with a crucifixion. But the designer should have some understanding of the clash of cultures hippies versus middle Australian rednecks which occurs in Joe's Seafood Restaurant.

For, only a few years ago, Jack Ritchie was living in Glen Innes, New England, and had never seen anything as decadent as the theatre. In fact, he left those bucolic delights to do a fashion design course in Sydney and an invitation out of the blue to turn his hand to the stage set him on his present course. He's still only 24, and divides his time between the Griffin Theatre company at the Stables and the Theatre of the Deaf. The latter is, Jack Ritchie believes, the most popular Theatre in Education company in Sydney with two shows in schools most days of the week. Most of the actors are themselves deaf, but communicate through mime and sign language which Jack has had to learn.

"It should be everyone's second language," he claims. "It's just as fast as normal conversation, and you can use gestures to put inflections on the words. Schoolkids follow the shows very easily and For Barry Dickens's new play A Couple of Broken Hearts, the Melbourne playwright has been very specific about his Seafood Restaurant in Yass centre of the Pinball machines have had to be borrowed, tables and chairs have been brought out after having already appeared in a dozen productions, the neon signs outside are in fact coloured light bulbs, and the cross (yes, there is one) is solid timber. They have had to install a new roller door though at the back of the Stables' tiny stage-in-the-round. Luckily, Jack Ritchie was able to get it as a donation and he's as pleased as a child with a new toy over it.

It's given a back entrance to the stage for the first time. Mind you, the cast will have to climb up a ladder and come in from a window to make their entrances but you can't have everything. Jack Ritchie loves working in the Stables' minute spaces "it's a great challenge for the designer having the audience right on top of you." With a stage which is all of THOUGH it continues to operate with a refreshing lack of pretentiousness, the is one of the most polished and professional theatres around. Submariners is a fairly ordinary play. But it's staged with such conviction and such attention for detail that the performance makes up for what is lacking on the page.

You don't' have to know what it's like in the officers' mess of a Polaris submarine to know that nothing in the set is out of place. It is so carefully designed and constructed that it becomes "home" for the audience as well as the cast. This is important because the play sets out to demonstrate what life is like in confined spaces which offer few physical and emotional outlets. In such confinements, an eight-week tour of duty can seem like a lifetime, particularly when you don't know where you're going or what you're doing there. Life at the bottom of the ocean is described in all its tediousness.

There are 28 movies to be sat through but Emmanuclle Goes To self-improvement classes down and surprise your wife, or knit her a of doubtful value, and innumerable games of housie. The men cope as best they can. Splash is the fitness fanatic From left: Alan David Lee, Terry Brady and Doug Wiggins in Submariners. I who drives everyone mad with his clean living and his dirty socks. Houscy is obsessed with passing exams and improving his status, despite being quite unable to make the grade.

Spider is all set to fake a breakdown and get a posting on land, but can never seem to find the right moment. And at each extreme arc the Chaplain, reconciled to the futility of it all. and Cock, who knows he's got to get out and doesn't care how. Cock is the agent and Alan David Lee plays the part with appropriate mis'. chievousncss.

His attempt to secure a discharge on the grounds of homosexuality provides much fund and laughter, particularly as-it fails. 1 Old salts say that there are three types of people: Those who arc alive, those who are dead, and those who arc at sea. This play leaves you with the feeling that it was never more true than it is now. I SOnly The Sydney Morning sharp and witty and original and never dull. The Herald.

More than a Herald has five liftout magazines which take the gloss off the glossies added new columns which are Tribute to a musical diplomat News Paper. i By FRED BLANKS The Guide tfenryk Szrrynt (violin) and Romola CostanUno (piano) ABC Recital. Music by Mozart, Bach, PadercwikJ, SzjmanoMskf and Zanockl. Opera House Concert Hall. July 3.

(Mondays) liPiillif The complete TV and sound guide. either to nervousness or disdain, and he makes a long ritual of tuning but when he is finally ready, all uneasiness melts away. This happened before Bach's Partita No 2, which had a slightly matter-of-fact aura in a technically superb Chaconne, and it happened before the Paderewski sonata, an immediately appealing work which sallows the violin to be romantically explicit and gives the piano a rewardingly busy part, affording! Romola Coslantino the chance 40 remind us, if reminder was necessary, of how excellent a musician she is. If the keyboard here and in Mozart's K.481 sonata sometimes sounded rather assertive, that was principally because Hcnryk Szeryng resolutely rcfraiucd from inflating (he volume of his tone. In this way.

he protklcd its sweelncss and the great pleasure of this concert. at the Versailles Treaty Conference in 19 19. "The great pianist Paderewski," he exclaimed, "and now you are Premier of Poland." Paderewski, triumphant hero and first Prime Minister of his free country, nodded, "What a comedown." said Clemenceau. Henryk Szeryng has become something of a Polish-Mexican diplomat, but there has been no come-down; music, has remained foremost. Foremost in the.

tone he conjures up from his linsiiimiem is the very essence of sweelncss; mil one note in a long recital strayed from perfect virtue, and even the highest notes, in the Song Of Ro-xanc from Szymanowski's opera King Roger, trod along the razor's edge of precision. His platform manner has strange aspects, attributable Good Living (Tuesdays) A DIPLOMATIC musician paid tribute to a musical diplomat when the renowned Polish violinist Hcnryk Szeryng ployed a sonata by his compatriot Jan Paderewski at his Opera House recital on Sunday afternoon. The performance of this rarely-heard work reminded me of a story, told by another famous Polish musician, Arthur Rubinstein, in his of bow the French statesman Clc-menceau first greeted Paderewski a 'i Fine food, fashion and travel. Life and Home (Thursdays) Escape to the Blue Mountains Make yourself at home. Mm fP mm V.

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The Good Weekend (Saturdays) ill wm wm wm JIMMk mm Mm Wmm WmMwm. MmSm wm Wm WmW lllr mi mmm mWLJm mm iW Wtm KB wtm mSm MMrnr HICT Iff Witt Wm tBH Wis Wm MB Wmm, Wmm WMm mM mmm mdm mm mmm Unwind with the weekly "big The Sydney Morning 1 Herald Australia's great value newspaper. Over the fence for twenty cents! You can have the convenience of The Sydney Morning Herald and The Sun-Herald home-delivered for an additional 20 cents per week. Your local newsagent will deliver your Herald and Sun-Herald Monday to Sunday before breakfast for this small additional booking fee. And, if you have The Sydney Morning Herald delivered six days per week, you also qualify for Herald Free Accident Insurance.

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