The Age from Melbourne, Victoria, Australia • Page 10

10- THE AGE, Tuesday 2 December 1980 ARCHITECTURE Great Shakespeare experiment Norman Day THEATRE Jill Sykes I i 4 -5Jr Jtr www Pilots' station at Queenscliff: neo-classical, with City Square Squaring Iff at Queenscliff OUEENSCLIFF'S pilots' station shares an architectural kinship with Melbourne's City Square in more ways than being designed by the same architects. Denton, Corker and Marshall have imbued their building with a style similar to the square's and the site, although wildly different in physical terms, is conceptually like the block between the Town Hall and St Paul's Cathedral. Square and station are both in busy pedestrian areas. For the City Square, the archi influences. conc.ret5 nd Pale the Regent theatre behind the concrete blocks.

It is designed as Square cifnintS (-for From' abve, the Pilots' station eet'n8 administration is visible. Its stone-covered roof. framP a concrete circular skylights, silver cappings, ducts and aerials are available for At one end, the black glass a close inspection. They fail the pod of the pilots' lookout has a neatness test. banked grass verge which seems A great chance to deal with to be designed to deny the curi- the curious public, solve the roof ous public a chance to peak in problem and provide a public at the operations.

utility with a useful tourist place The same technique is used at hai lost- the "motpl" The roof could have Jipmi "If you have done much Shakespeare, you tend to approach it this way or that And suddenly you have that whole approach questioned not only by other people but by yourself. "I have come to think that perhaps over the years I haven't delved into the philosophy or the psychology under the surface of a play, that I have perhaps been too much concerned with how to actually do it." Brave words from one of Australia's most respected and experienced Shakespearian actors. In contrast, John Howard started with almost no Shakespearian experience: "I don't know the play-right or his plays." But Howard had only recently behind him the advantage of open teaching approach at the National Institute of Dramatic Art. He is one of the few in the group who champion the open rehearsals held last August. I found them hair-raising for the way they left actors exposed, but Howard explains: "Not only did it show people what we were doing.

It showed an actor that he could 'rehearse in public, which should make him a more fearless performer. I think it is a pity that actors try to recreate the same performance though the run of a play, instead of trying something different. This experience might give them the courage to experiment." And that, I think may have been the project's greatest gain. ing of the text: taking away something that is always involuntarily added to it as we see a man or a woman rather than a 'person' playing a role." This remark is the key to both the success and the failure of the performances. While concentration on the verbal calisthenics of the Two Gentlemen" text delights some and I am one of them other people are disappointed by a lack of passion which results from the presence of all these The whole point of nine actors and a director forsaking lucrative career opportunities and spending all this time rehearsing two plays was to find out.

what was so special about Shakespeare's plays, why they need their own style of rehearsal and playing. As Rex Cramphorn put it: "Instead of treating them as a kind of old version of David Williamson which you get through in a few weeks, we wanted to see what was different about them." To do this, they allowed the texts they chose- after reading and analysing a great many of them to set the direction, and discussed every production point democratically. The season has been extended to next Saturday and the audiences, a little uncertain at first, have built up strongly. Most people seem happy to swap elaborate sets and costumes for minutely analysed dialogue, delivered with understanding. Despite their differences at SYDNEY.

An extraordinary theatrical event is taking place here: the great Shakespeare experiment. It began with a limited life grant of just under $100,000 from the Australian Council. It is finishing with a season of two early Shakespearian plays 'Measure for Measure' and The Two Gentlemen of Verona' in which a group of Sydney's leading actors have invested six months ofStheir careers. They have also bravely exposed their skills to public view In open rehearsals and in performances that are still exploring the nuances of the texts. They have even tackled roles of the opposite sex.

Imagine, then, the balding and greying Ron Haddrick playing the heav'nly Julia. He has no wig or makeup, and delivers such lines as the inescapable reference to herhis hair: "I'll knit it up in silken strings." In an alternative casting of Two Gentlemen', he plays Pan-thino rather more convincingly, I must admit, but the role-swapping has proved to be one of the most interesting aspects of the group's six-month study of Shakespearian texts. John Gaden's divine Silvia a simpering maid of righteous purity and just an occasional backward glance is matched by Jennifer Hagan's cavalier Valentine. Ruth Cracknell has a wonderful time with Launce, relishing the quick repartee, and Kerry Walker's rollicking Speed is a nice contrast to her 'Measure for Measure' role, ice-cold Isabella. "The interesting thing in this is that you come not to think about male and female, but of a person playing a person," says Ruth Cracknell.

It's the same thing when you go to Japanese theatre or watch a great mime or go to Barry Humphries. "It is a very interesting approach, and for us I think it has helped the text." On the same topic, Ron Haddrick comments: "The qualities we found in the verse come out, no matter who is playing the role." Rex Cramphorn, nominal director in what was a long, democratic process of production, explains how it all happened: our first attempt at it, everyone did a sort of opposite role caricature. So we quickly gave it up, thinking what an awful idea that was. "I don't know how it crept back in. It was weeks later, and it suddenly happened again.

It wasn't imposed, and it worked. We'd got used to the text, and it was terrifically interesting. "In a way, it is doubly reveal tects designed a series of attrac lecis aesigneu a series 01 aurac- nilvij i.r tions -the waterworks, split firemen waiting for their piece of come a display for action. area information about marine historv. levels, semi-enclosed courtyards Ron Haddrick: role-swapping.

times, the actors involved Arthur Dignam, Drew Forsythe, John Howard and Robert Menzies besides those already mentioned are still working as a team. Whether they would apply for another grant in a year or so to consolidate the experience needs careful consideration. So much has already been achieved. The seeds of what they have learned about Shakespeare's plays, themselves and their profession, are likely to flourish on a variety of Australian stages for years to come. Ron Haddrick, who cut his Shakespearian teeth 30 years ago at Stratford in the company of Laurence Vivien Leigh, Michael Redgrave, John Gielgud and Peggy Ashcroft, is humble in his self-analysis: People are attracted, out of curiosity, to the buildings, its green banks of lawn and the neatness of a manmade thing sitting so close to the sea invite a closer look.

Where the City Square fails by overcatering, the pilots' station fails bv not eivine ennneh and the yellow sculpture which, in effect, expel people from the place. Although the Square is intended to be predominantly FOR people, its over-design features tend to deny them a natural part in the place. At Queenscliff that effect Is reversed. shipping and how pilots work. Inside, the building is cool and efficient, in a European way.

A long passage, like the City Square arcade, connects the sections of the building and daylight floods most areas. Denton, Corker and Marshall have taken great care to detail concrete joints, timber sunshades and glazing so that they have more than functional and struc thought to ways of frustrating people's inquisitiveness while, at For their new building, the pilots obtained a block of the allowing them ful Queenscliff beach, which is acn. Crown land and therefore used another level, as a three tural purposes. Windows are divided into small bv the public. dimensional form, the building COfTTYIAnfc Tiff nnlir tn roif fi People trudge tnrougn ine sana yuumm a mc regulations, but to contribute to and scrape through the seaweed expression of an architectural embellishment.

vnjr jijuaic mm mere is nu TV matrix screen to escape reality this time. Behind the building, a well-planted slope rises to the Queenscliff street level, like the wall of as they walk between the pilot's station and a jetty used by the pilots to board their craft. The building is a long, formal single-storey structure built from mm The use of a rounded concrete frame to form an open courtyard is a neo-classical device which succeeds, especially in the abstract way it is pushed out from the building bulk. This device should have been expanded to cater for the public, so that it could share the pilot's part of the beach. Then we would have had a most successful building.

Unsticking a stigma BRIEFLY QJKLI TO JLaJ INTERVIEW Neil Jillett QDKfifllL rpHE Aborigines' Advancement League is sponsoring an exhibition of Aboriginal art at 'The Age' Gallery. The theme of the exhibition is Maintaining Aboriginal Identity, and there will be demonstrations by artists from the Swan Hill Aboriginal Community Co-operative and the Rumbalara Abori: ginal Co-operative. AN exhibition of paintings and drawings by Maggie Mezaks opens at Zanders Bond Gallery, Armadale, on 9 December. SYDNEY. "Those things are a terrible stigma," says actress Jacki Weaver.

"They stick with you for years." She is talking about her appearances in the TV panel game 'Would You Believe', in which she presented herself as a dizzy, though not necessarily dumb, blonde. "The personality was scripted for me," she remembers. "It was me exhibiting a flippancy that belied my basically serious nature." Miss Weaver has no trouble "I'm also aching to do Ibsen," she says. "I've always wanted to do Norah in 'A Doll's House'. I'd also like to do the girl in 'The Wild Duck', although she's 14 and I'm 33.

But Mai Zetterling did it when she was 41, so perhaps I could manage." Miss Weaver has just finished not being her age. In the TV adaptation of Sumner Locke Elliott's 'Water Under the Bridge' PHOTOGRAPHY A innmllipt Itlhn lirAVlt persuading Sydney audiences that she can be undizzily serious, from 17 to 50. sometimes during lOny rerry They are used to seeing her on tne same day's filming. Alcosser's soft sell She is roughly her own age in 'They're Playing Our Song', which has been running on Broadway for two years and in Sydney for three months. It is about a composer (played in Australia by John Waters) who falls in love with a lyricist (Jacki Weaver).

According to the publicity. ALCOSSER'S "It MURRAY Dhotoeraphs at the Tol- playwright Neil Simon based the show's book on a romance be- arnn Galleries. South Yarra, tween his collaborators, Marvin are striking in size, richness of Hamlisch (music) and -Carole cojor and tne strong similarity Ba.yr wf- they bear to advertising pro- Miss Weaver, giving the pub- licitv a nudge, says: "Marvin These features characterise his claims it's not a bit like the real relationship, but Carole says it's amazingly, incredibly like it." Whatever the truth of the publicity, Miss Weaver's confidence that the show will appeal to Melbourne seems well-founded. 'They're Playing Our Song', is bright, bouncy and tuneful, a blend of wit and corn that sticks to the middle of the road. And Jackie Weaver appears on stage in a selection of brunette wigs.

the dizzy-blonde stigma could come completely unstuck after the show's opening on 9 January. stage in the classics as well as popping up on TV every now and then in variations of the dizzy personality. She will soon be in Melbourne, starring in a musical, 'They're Playing Our Song', with John Waters at the Comedy. It will be only her second stage appearance there. The first was 10 years ago, in a Bandwagon', with Peggy Mount, at the Athenaeum.

Jacki Weaver has been in show business since 1962, when, as a schoolgirl, she had the title role in 'Cinderella. Since then, with a string of appearances on stage, in films and TV. shows and series and commercials (which she dislikes and does rarely "only when I need the she has become one of Australia's busiest and most popular actresses. She does not like to leave her Sydney base, because that usually means leaving her son Dylan, 10, behind as well. "I think it's possible to have a child and a career," she says, "but you have to give yourself to the child.

You shouldn't toe a parent if you're not prepared to act like one." Miss Weaver tries hard to be helpful at interviews. She knows how frustrating it can be trying to draw answers from people who are reluctant to give them for a year, she was an interviewer on Mike Willesee's TV current affairs show. "That was in 1977," she says. "I eventually gave it up because I felt silly going off at night to be in 'The Three Sisters' after interviewing people during the day." Jacki Weaver in Chekhov! The dizzy blonde stigma begins to come unstuck at a great rate. AT THE FRONTIERS OF KNOWLEDGE The adventure of science Is all around us.

Now there Is an Australian magazine to share it with you. AWAKENING A SENSE OF WONDER The first Issue of Omega examines the Joining of mind and computer the destiny of mankind in space new insights into ESP, the origins of the universe, the UFO debate BRINGING SCIENCE TO LIFE Startling new light on our changing climate research into sexuality and smell the latest technology of communications a magnificent fold-out feature on medicine's future GIVING NEW ANSWERS Australia's secret role In the nuclear balance of terror cancer: does personality put you at risk? first-ever look at the surface of Venus Australian quest to defeat a deadly virus LOOK FOR IT AT YOUR NEWSAGENTS work, which, in style and temperament, is distinctly that of a New York-based photographer. For his first exhibition in Australia he produced a large set of color photographs of chocolates and candies with a pop-art flavor; for this, his second, equally large prints of flowers. These may be split into two The first consists of pairs of roses and tulips which bear a remarkable resemblance to chocolate-box illustration. One assumes that they are satirical, as it is only their size and the repeated use of a fairly innocuous compositional motif which distinguish them from pictures of kittens in boots or vince-covered cottages in Sussex.

In marked contrast, the second group is less stylised and, as a result, more satisfying. What at first seem to be indiscriminate jumbles of flowers and leaves, often torn and wilted, resolve into beautiful patterns, rich in texture and information. One is less conscious of being confronted by a photograph of giant proportions, and the formal considerations of grain and sharpness become secondary, or lose importance altogether. Jacki Weaver: aching for Ibsen. DEAKIN UNIVERSITY GEELONG THE MILL THEATRE PROJECT- COMPANY MANAGER The Mill Community Theatre Project requires a Company Manager in 1981 The position is full time with a Company of six professional actors working in community theatre in Geelong.

The appointee will be responsible for the company's financial affairs, the scheduling of -its activities and the management of its public profile Salary $200.00 per week Commencement date-Negotiable late January 1981 The University reserves the right not to make an appointment if funding, is not available Additional information is available from the Staff Officer at the address blbvv; Written applications (quoting reference number 80051) should include a complete curriculum. vitae and the names and addresses of three referees and should be sent to reach the Staff Officer. Deakm University. Victoria, 3217 by 8 December 1980 Telephone enquiries (052) 47 1131 A.L PRITCHARD WARNING NOTICE The well kr -o RUBIK'S CUBE puzzle Is the subject ot Copyright and Common Law rights relating to that product. A valuable reputation has been established in respect of the RUBIK'S CUBE puzzle in Australia and Ideal Toy Corporation will do all that is necessary to protect that reputation through the legal processes available in this country In particular.

Ideal Toy Corporation hereby gives notice of its intention to vigorously enforce such rights as it possesses in Australia against imitations of the RUBIK'S CUBE puzzle as may be offered on the Australian Market Ideal Toy Corporation of 184-10 Jamaica Avenue. Hollis. New York. 1 1423. United States of America.

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