Hello Down There !
Junction Theatre Company
Space
Reviewed by Murray Bramwell
Hello Down There! first played in June this year when Junction presented this remarkable community venture at Theatre 62. Now under the auspices of the Festival Centre Trust’s New Works program it has had a return season in the Space.
It is impossible not to be impressed by the the energy and commitment of this project. With a cast of thirty four, a choir of twelve, a seven piece band and more writers than the Roseanne show, the logistics facing director Geoff Crowhurst and script co-ordinator Pat Cranney can only have been considerable. To their credit they have helped facilitate an ambitious venture with the regard for process and participation which is their and Junction’s trademark.
“There was no selection process for this production,” Geoff Crowhurst writes in the program notes, “Anyone who wanted to be involved became involved. The initial workshops were advertised through the daily papers.” Produced in collaboration with the Trades and Labor Council and with the direct support of seven trade unions it is Junction’s largest Art and Working Life project to date. The show that has emerged is an accretion of songs, narratives and issues. It over-reaches, at times it threatens to break back into the parts of its sum but it is also heroic in scope and unashamedly open-hearted.
Hello Down There! are the words of Kim Circus Tent, banker of this parish, looking out on the Ordinary Folk from the top storey of his tower of mammon. Hello Up There, sings the cast representing the reticulated grief of financial mismanagement. Some are trying to make a living from street stalls, others from small business zeal, working men and women suffer the effects of rationalisation and changing work practice. Husband is sundered from wife, child from family, comrades squabble, bosses glower and hard won industrial gains are lost. Meanwhile the board of the bank is meek in the face of the financial conjurings of Circus Tent who is madly making deals he can’t pay for, helping out the Premier by delaying an increase in interest rates and taking a little fiscal interest of his own in an offshore outfit called Corblimeycorp.
It is meant to sound familiar – references to Dazzleland and Hindley Street make it clear that it is our own dear city with its own expensive bank and not very endearing former Premier that is being alluded to. But the concern with street kids, domestic violence and sexual abuse, along with the concern for industrial equity make it also generic, at times reflexively so.
Hello Down There! uses its musical format to offset some of the earnestness of the material. Mary Laslett contributes some sweet pop, Sue Boyd and Mark Gorrie the satiric ditties on multi-skilling, Susanne Tredrea and Justin Bentley the tender Mamma’s Little Girl and Refugees . Among the many lively performances Derek Boyd brings buoyant humour as Bluejay, also memorable are Tina Namow’s Joan and Michael Bryant’s beleaguered union man, Ian. Juan Crosbie is droll as Circus Tent and Daniel Weissmann is a showstopper as the jogging Premier. Design co-ordinator Lisa Philip-Harbutt’s cartoon Big Bank is a strong focus for the action and the music, under the direction of Ian Farr, is one of the strengths of the production – listenable songs, a punchy band and the mellifluous voices of the Trade Union Choir from the mezzanine.
But despite my admiration for the dedication and warmth of this production I am left in two minds about its inferences. It is indisputable that the State Bank collapse is a scandal and a disaster and that there are, and will be for some time, distressing consequences for this state. But it is unhelpful to suggest that if it hadn’t happened all would be well, that if it weren’t for the likes of Circus Tent and inattentive Premiers there’d be no problems.
The rationalisations in the workplace, the destruction of union bargaining, the abuse of children and the distress of the citizenry are all consequences of a much wider crisis, one that we would have been much more aware of if the Berlin Wall hadn’t come down and the economies of Eastern Europe hadn’t gone down the toilet. The fact that two thirds of the states of the United States are as broke as we are because of Savings and Loans scandals, that bank losses of our local kind have occurred throughout Western Europe has been determinedly overlooked. If this had happened in the 1930s it would have been called a crisis of capitalism. We’ve persuaded ourselves it’s only a blip of bad management.
It is not the task of a good-natured show like Hello Down There! to fight all our battles for us and I’m not suggesting it should. But the questions it raises lead to more questions. Maybe corporate interests are too powerful for industrial accords any more and maybe a system that so readily accepts ten to fifteen percent unemployment is not a system at all. Maybe we should be recognising economic rationalism for the voodoo it is. Then perhaps, rather than watching sorrowful, state-subsidised tableaux of our kids dying of neglect, we could really do something for them.
The Adelaide Review, No. 119, October, 1993. p.23