Much Ado About Nothing
State Theatre Company

Turning the Tables
The Red Shed Company

Ra Ra Zoo
The Space Cabaret

The State Theatre Company opened their 1987 season with a rousing production of Much Ado About Nothing. Much Ado is not much done. It is probably ten years since it was last performed in Australia but it is a favourite of director John Gaden and he has long wanted to stage it.

Much Ado poses both difficulties and delights for directors and actors, and co-directors Gaden and Gale Edwards acknowledge this in their production. While not the only Shakespearean comedy with a bewildering plot-line and riddled with word-play, Much Ado nevertheless can be confusing and unrewarding. The story of Hero, daughter of Leonato, defamed by Don John and humiliated by Don Pedro has much contrivance to it. Further, like Bertram in All’s Well That Ends Well, Hero’s suitor, Claudio, is a yuppy, unlikeable sort of chap, so it is hard to be pleased at their nuptial reconciliation.

It is the characters of Beatrice and Benedick, slugging it out epithet for epithet, who bring the play to life. The witty badinage between Benedick, erstwhile soldier with a contempt for lovers’ folly, and Beatrice, self-possessed, intelligent and yet unworldly, gives a breadth and verve to Much Ado which, as Gaden recognises, makes for splendid theatre.

Gaden and Edwards have retained the setting in Messina but have brought the date forward from 1596 to 1890 so that the tension between codes of honour and individual intuition and loyalty are seen in the context of Victorian society on the cusp of fundamental transformation. This gives added pertinence to Beatrice’s satiric account of male vanity and links the patriarchal cruelties expressed in the play with their persistent residues in our own time.

But State’s production is far from ponderous in its treatment. Rather it errs initially on the side of superficiality, as Acts I and II look uncomfortably like an eisteddfod of coarse acting. We are definitely in Messina, Sicily, not Messina, Stratford on A, so performances and costumes are strongly ltalianate with raucous Commedia del Arte embellishments. It is a calculated risk, and on opening night a tendency to turn narrative into hyperactive charade was evident.

But no-one could call this Much Ado dreary, and audiences have responded warmly to the energy and openness of Gaden and Edwards’ rendering of the text. Ken Wilby and Mark Thompson have designed a three-sided colonnade which permits a large, uncluttered acting area providing opportunity for some refreshingly anti-naturalistic treatment of scenes such as those when Beatrice and Benedick overhear reports of their ardour for each other.

In the leads, William Zappa and Celia de Burgh make Benedick and Beatrice vivid and intelligent. Zappa begins broadly but his Benedick appropriately gains subtlety and complexity as the play progresses. It is a fine performance, not least for Zappa’s nimble and lucid diction. Celia de Burgh is an equal match as Beatrice, forthright, fiery but never shrewish, gradually and gracefully learning not to be afraid of loving.

In other roles, Vic Rooney gives a Leonato who is over-reactive but reveals integrity and courage; Peter Crossley keeps Don John in a vice-like grip, and Luciano Martucci does his best to make the impossible Claudio seem possible. Catherine McClements as Hero, the heroine, gives definition and interest as far as the part can permit. Henry Salter’s Dogberry is Monty Python in a cocked hat. It is likeable comedy but at times short-circuits Dogberry ‘s satiric dimension.

Overall, State have put together a production that signals their strength and will consolidate rapport with Adelaide audiences. This Much Ado is visually dashing, amusing and shrewdly streamlined. But in being frothy, State deny us some of the play’s gravity. It is good to be accessible but the company doesn’t have to stoop to conquer.

*********************

The Red Shed Company, wryly refer to themselves as the RSC! Their production of Sue Townsend’s Bazaar and Rummage late last year was an unexpected delight when much theatre in Adelaide was predictable or over-reaching itself or both.

RSC’s second venture, called Turning the Tables, consists of four analogues for women by Dario Fo and Franca Rame. Whereas the Townsend piece gave the RSC players a chance to gain confidence as an ensemble, performing genial but provocative material, Turning the Tables presents a more formidable task. The starkly separate performances highlight the actors’ inexperience, and the choice of material , however worthy, amounts to a rather repetitious castigation of sexism.

Antonietta Morgillo began the night with “Waking Up” from Female Parts, Fo’s warm but acerbic account of a woman run ragged serving the patriarchy both at home and in the factory. Morgillo brought a humorous derision to the part and despite some rattly diction , set an expectation which Alice McHenry ‘s Whore in a Madhouse could not sustain. Similarly, Mary Ann Pitman’s Alice in Wonderlessland – with the exception of a mordant narration (in several voices) of Alice being lured into blue movies – did not really succeed in focussing the writing. It is no easy task, of course, when Franca Rame is dealing at times in one dimensional diatribe

The most successful piece and, unsurprisingly, far and away the most vividly written, was Rame’s The Mother, presented by Eileen Darley. This account of the recollections and reactions of the mother of a member of the Red Brigade, is evocative and savagely examines the intrinsic violence and hypocrisy of our institutions. Darley gave a finely shaded performance, yet again showing what quiet intensity she is capable of generating.

RSC has set itself a stern task this time and inevitably, Turning The Tables seems more like prentice work. But the company was formed to give new actors a crack at performing material worth thinking about and a chance to develop their abilities. So the players, and directors Cath McKinnon and David Carlin , deserve credit for taking risks. Perhaps in their next production they will calculate them to better effect.

*********************

The Cabaret season in the Festival Centre Space has been a great success. The crowds carne for the calculated malice of the Doug Anthony Allstars and even more for the orchestrated mayhem of the Castanet Club. But nothing prepared us for Ra Ra Zoo.

With a combination of circus and theatre, Ra Ra Zoo has by some extraordinary alchemy, made gold out of foolery. This quartet consists of former Circus Oz principals, Stephen Kent and Sue Broadway, as well as Dave Spathaky, a juggler and neo-vaudevillain (sic) from the UK. Deborah Pope replaces Ra Ra Zoo regular Sue Bradley for this Australian tour.

We’ve seen it all before – juggling, mime, trapeze and rope acrobatics, escapology and conjuring have become de rigeur in the earnest realm of the ‘skills workshop’ but Ra Ra Zoo make it new, and bring to it a dark wit and theatrical invention that is exhilarating.

When they climb manacled into suitcases or move through sight gags that make your brain hurt, Ra Ra Zoo show an affection for the sources of their routines, and then add a half turn of surreal absurdity of their own. They are trekking across Australia at this very moment, don’t miss their magic.

Murray Bramwell

CentreStage Australia, April, 1987, pp. 17-18.