'I can see my place from here!'

Back at home - I live in in the ‘projects’ surrounding Belvoir - life is as per usual. Though one of my pussy cats died. He was a real sweetie and I loved him heaps. But I am getting a new one: instead of Amos & Andy, very soon I will have Amos & Dandy. Lots of photos of domestic bliss anticipated as the new boy sorts out his status with ‘he who has been here from the very beginning’.

I forgot to tell you, a few weeks back, how I saved our block of flats from burning down. The Vietnamese man on the ground floor enjoys a little tipple and Read the rest of this entry »

A colleague sent me this article - which further explains why Barrie Kosky feels more at home in Berlin than here.

Outrageousness, Herr Director, Is a Tough Act to Follow

By SALLY McGRANE

(New York Times, 14 January 2007)

Frank Castorf's 2004 production of Kokain

WHEN the director Frank Castorf was being considered to head Berlin’s second largest state-owned theater in 1991, the cultural powerbroker Ivan Nagel urged the German Senate to take a risk on him and his politically minded troupe, saying, “In three years they will either be dead or famous.” Mr. Castorf got the job, and the following year he opened at the Volksbühne, or People’s Theater, with a series of brash productions. Under his direction, actors ignored huge portions of the classical texts they performed, stripped naked, screamed their lines for the duration of five-hour productions, got drunk onstage, dropped out of character, conducted private fights, tossed paint at their public, saw a third of the audience walk out as they spoke two lines at an excruciatingly slow pace, may or may not have induced a theatergoer to drink urine, threw potato salad, immersed themselves in water, recited newspaper reports of Hitler’s last peacetime birthday party, told bad jokes, called the audience East German sellouts and appeared to but did not kill a mouse. After their first season the prestigious magazine Theaterheute (Theater Today) named the Volksbühne Theater of the Year.

Mr. Castorf and his troupe were famous.

Read the rest of this entry »

Peter Carroll (centre) and John Gaden (right) ready to party in The Bacchae - part three of Kosky's The Lost Echo.

What I have posted on this site so far about Herr Kosky’s Poppea has been a tease, apart from the link to Ms Croggon’s brilliant review. But I do have a little bit of straight talking of my own to do. I held off writing something, not only because I was daunted: but also because I was booked in to meet with La Barrie for a short conversation and I thought it might be good to wait until after that. Some of you know I have been asked to write a Currency Press Platform Paper on the ‘life and times’ of the STC Actors Company – not due out until April next year. And I have decided the way I wanted to do this is talk to as many people who were involved in project as I can and find out what the experience it had been like for them. I am guessing varied responses. So far I have spoken with Benedict Andrews and Robyn Nevin – both of whom were wonderfully open and insightful with their memories and opinions. And now I have the voice Kosky digitalized and ready to be uploaded.

In my preparation I got a chance to relive The Lost Echo by way of a video recording in the STC archives. Kosky’s work continuously folds back on itself, ideas and images return in Ovid-like permutations on a regular basis. But, I noted, the connections between The Lost Echo and Poppea are particularly striking. Read the rest of this entry »

For those who saw Kosky’s Poppea

I am so nearly back to writing on this site on a regular basis. I think. The psychodrama phase of my healing is as complete as it ever will be; and the chronic pain problems I have been enduring which have kept me away from productive work for weeks now appear to be on fading. I hope. After visits to a range of my healers I was directed to a new acupuncturist! I have been seeing him every second or third day for the past few weeks, and only just the last two nights in a few months have I slept all the way through to dawn. I am not brave enough to declare victory yet, but I am grateful for the peace that has already descended on my body and soul.

But such a trail of unfinished business. Shows I wanted to see that I have missed; and shows I have seen and am yet to write about. Before I step back into the breeches, I feel a need to add a little more to what I wrote recently about Brendan Cowell’s Ruben Guthrie and Tommy Murphy’s Saturn’s Return. Well, as someone distantly connected to one of these productions has pointed out: I did not say much about the plays. My piece was more about the writers – the guys. It was feedback I half expected because I sensed a niggle of conscience as I put that piece up. The scribble was amusing – a few people have said that. And some friends were pleased to see me back in droll form, enjoying myself. But in my own mind I knew I had only done half the job. It’s one thing to toy with artists as personalities for the sake of some amusing copy. But where were my paragraphs on the work? To say that the new version of Ruben Guthrie is more successful than what I had anticipated; and, in my view, the new Saturn’s Return less successful than I had hoped, is not criticism. It is dinner party conversation. I have thought much over the years about what criticism can and should involve. I have steadfastly taken to the view that it is of less import whether a critic likes a show or not, than it is for them to succinctly outline their reasons why. It’s all about the WHY!

Read the rest of this entry »

Every blog site requires the occasional purge - a good flushing - enjoy this intellectual vacation while I prepare something of my own. Less meaty…??

U can find anything on the net if you look

I know toilet humour is meant to be the prevail of pimply teenage boys but I have to admit I found this essay hilarious. I dedicate this posting to Maestro Barrie Kosky who profoundly respects bodily functions and fluids and whose The Coronation of Poppea I encountered last night. If there is anyway you can get to see it - do. It is a masterpiece. Ravishing. The best from the best….

Read the rest of this entry »

Not long after I started this ‘e’-gotistical site, after I had been away to Ernabella with the Big hART mob, I sat down one day, dropped my guard, and kinda put some of it down on paper. It was a rare story without photos and I guess it exposed me for the man I was – or wasn’t. And likely never will be.
It’s 3.30 am on a Fri nite/ Sat am – and there has been a gnawing at me for some weeks that I need to do the same again. It goes against all my training – self censorship. The game a secondary artist like myself plays, expressing himself from behind the mask of other people’s creative work.

Why don’t I write my own novels, plays, symphonies – people often ask. Well I was doing that when I fell off a cliff in 1979, and funny I thought the impulse would come back one day. But it never has. I have had those creationist feelings rise up inside me many a time – and some I have given love and time to. Sometimes a year or two and hundreds of pages. But they have all died. A library of still-born children. Either, ultimately, I could not face the darkness I discovered inside myself. Or if I tried to lighten up it all just got too evasive and silly.

I live in the pain of never really being able to express myself directly. And so I figure the next best thing is to encourage others attempting the same. Being a critic, which I think is a disgusting word, is probably the stupidest way to go about such a goal because it can encourage such nay-saying. I know I have hurt many people in the past. These days I try to take a gentler path – looking for work that I can ‘speak up’; and only going to the negative when I feel I cannot possibly, in all conscience, avoid it.

I started jameswaites.com because it was becoming obvious that the print media was dying all around me/us. Thus far posting my odd and erratic stories has been fun. Though bluurging does encourage haste and superficiality. All my regular readers (I know who the three of you are) understand I took some time off of late to rest and recreate after some unfortunate stuff happened on a train. The funny thing is – it wasn’t the train thing itself that has brought me undone. As one pal reminded me – we all get beat up on a train once or twice in our lives (in some shape or form). That’s life and that’s my attitude too. It was the fact that for a privileged yuppie white guy from the first world, my poor body (and my soul) had already been to through quite lot. As a self-defined as a pick-yourself-up-off-the-mat kinda guy, it was odd a cupla months later to fell back over again. And not get up!

Violence is a strange phenomenon and it has an unattractive ability of multiplying with itself. So while it was no EXCUSE – it was also horribly predictable that, as a victim, I might lash out myself somewhere down the track. Two very decent people were on the receiving end. One got yelled at, another got slapped. One is not really reconciled, the other – well let’s just say – the wounds are healing. In this second case, the person I slapped, well that person went off and slapped someone else not long after. So you get my point. And you can probably understand now why I am  reading Christos Tsiolkas’s book, The Slap, with such interest at the moment.

I won’t bore you with the litany of scars marked on my body from a life, willingly and accidentally tossed into the big surf time and time again. I was first given the last rites at six weeks old, and I have been that close again over the years at least three or four times. I am taking about ‘we are about to lose him ‘scenes, not just sore and bloodied from an encounter on a train etc and the like. There’s been plenty of that too. I’ve had a knife put to my throat in an Amsterdam bar, and once got mugged by a junkie when I got lost somewhere round NYC’s lower-east side. I left my last boyfrend a couple of years back after his alcoholism got to such a point he entered the bedroom with an axe. And only just over a year ago he broke into my city apartment and tried to set me alight. To extend the list would be milking for laughs.

My poor true self has had so many dings and my life narrative so many set backs, the problem with the incident on the train is that a couple of months later, my body and soul simply started to pack it in. I just could not get back up off the mat. All those above incidents and more I will not name converged into Condradian darkness.

It has been a most fascinating experience to watch, if rather horrible to live through. Waking up in the morning after almost no sleep, days at a time, so lost and confused I have had no idea what my tasks were for the day – much less any sense that I might be able to achieve them. Some of you have been very ind to me. Others I had mistaken as friends have been self-serving and merciless. The Rosencranz and Guildenstern scene in a local coffee shop is one I will not easily forget.

I have tried every trick in the book to get by to get through – gp, psychiatrist, osteopath, acupuncturist, swimming, walks with friends, party drugs, days in bed, psychopath, reading voluminously, movies by myself, Rage into the early hours, trying to help others worse off. And as any of of you who have been at all close to me through these past few months – it has been mad. Just as I would overcome one setback, I would be faced with another. I have felt like Job.

Lucky I have some great friends. And what’s interesting about times of trouble are the new people who miraculously appear. It happened when I was in hospital in 1979/80/81 – strangers found me and befriended me – and gave me love. And once repaired and back out in the world – they stepped back into the landscape.
Again this time several new people have been incredibly kind to me. You know who you are. Now things are getting better at last – they must be if I can bring myself to be this frank – I trust you will remain in the foreground. Because we share professional interests, I think this is possible.

When times are tough, it does help to think of others.  I have always had time for those homeless men and women who sell The Big Issue. I can think of only two nights in my life when I have not had a cosy bed to go home to somewhere – and that’s only because I’ve lost my keys to the hotel or whatever!  But how is this for tough? One guy who often sells The Big Issue at the Devonshire Street tunnel was looking worse for wear the other morning. He had been caught on the train to Newcastle a few hours earlier by some guards – this long night train is a common place to sleep for a number of homeless – and for whatever reason he had got a flogging. The cops came and charged him. I don’t know the facts, and what he might have said done to have caused offence. But he was definitely badly bruised. He had caught the train that night, rather than take a room, because that day had been his pension day. He had done a bold thing and bought a whole box of Big Issues in advance. Apparently other homeless people sometimes pick on you when you do this job. And this guy’s story was as backed up by an older woman who also sells The Big Issue on the next corner, we were all togetger as we shared a chat. A particular racial group who drink a lot and hang around Central like to come and hit you for your earnings, it turnsout. The day before, when he said no to their demands – they took their drinks and poured them into his box of magazines. His investment wrecked.
So where are we in the world when the poor start to turn on each other?

Now he had to appear in court for whacking a train guard in front of a pair of cops. Out of rage - that life is not fair to him. And no it isn’t. How hard does this guy have to try to get back up on his feet? How dare I even being to think I’ve got cause for complaint.

I say all this – I could say a lot more but I won’t. Because it is taking me longer to get back to writing on this site than I had expected. The wind is still not in my sails. I see plays and really don’t have much to say about them. Sorry about that. Just about everything seems so ‘how’s your father’ and profoundly slight. I hope, in writing this – to declare my hand – such as it is, I may begin to begin to set myself free.

As I have mentioned, It is not the bashing itself. It is what this experience has triggered in me. My poor body at the age of 54 has jacked up and said – enough is enough.  I look the human race in the eye and find myself, by and large, disgusted. Grossed out. We are wankers – we don’t deserve this planet. And until our artists (including play-makers) have the courage to face this ever-escalating truth, nights at the theatre etc will remain humdrum - barely worthy of their ticket price much less comment.

I got home from yet another medical appointment at the end of yesterday, to find a bunch if emails lying in wait. One of unexpected interest. The court-case regarding the main offender on the train is over – and the detective in charge (the cops have been really really decent to me through all of this) was able to release some images. Photos taken on the train – on the night. He sent me just one. One is quite enough. I cancelled my night, raided the medicine cupboard, and crashed. Yes I wept. I felt sorry for the world  - even  for the perpetrator - and for myself. I have woke up several times through the night; tossed and turned these past few hours trying to decide if the image is too obscene and melodramatic to post. But another part of me feels an urge to show you what it was like. What it is like.

I had so wanted to leave this melodrama behind me when I started writing again a few weeks ago. But my timing was off. I am hoping in putting this picture up I can shut the door on….what ….it has no name.
So much happened that night. I just can’t share it all with you. Maybe one day To Chris who phoned me by chance mid-bashing and heard it all from Brisbane – I am so sorry the drama of it all car-crashed our burgeoning relationship. You were nice. To the person I yelled at a few weeks later, for no good reason other than that I was not my normal self, all I can say again is I am sorry. And maybe when you look at this picture you might contemplate being less unforgiving. To the person I slapped in front of a thousand people – honey we’ve known and loved each other for over twenty years. Thanks for letting us be friends again. And yes, let’s go drink to human frailty.

To any of you still reading - you mustn’t be very busy. ha ha…..

Quite seriously, if the rugby league community could simply face up to the fact that ten guys wanking in a room with one unfortunate woman on the floor is basically a homosexual experience, then life would be a lot happier for all involved.

Courtesy Clive Faro

The one thing I’ve admired about the NRL Footy Show Sydney has been its lack of prejudice towards homosexuality. Though reasons for this have not been analysed. It was much more welcoming to Ian Roberts coming out than the gay press (who criticised him for being so slow about it!). The Footy Show gang also had a great laff about having a Mardi Gras float dedicated to them. And even Matty Johns himself has referred (on the show he swallowed half a Viagra - the other half was dropped by the Chief) to the idea that there is ‘a little bit of gay in everyone’.

The sex industry put it hands up this week and said it was more than happy to organise safe sessions of group sex for the players as a way to unwind and relax after a stiff game in pretty much any town where there is a sports oval. The gay community has been partly to blame in setting itself up as an exclusive sect: I think we need to get back to the early liberationist notion of ‘polymorphous perversity’ where sexuality is not seen as a set of defined boxes (only one of which a person is allowed to tick) and more a spectrum of behaviours along which some find a settled spot and others move along depending on the mood they’re in or the company they are keeping.

It has been fascinating on the gay sex sites since Brokeback and the coming out of Adam Sutton in Australia - many more real life ‘cowboys’ are presenting themselves online. But no footy players per se - though there is a lot of fetishing footy players elsewhere on the net and the broader culture.  If this (just cited) isn’t the gayest site I know - and ALL the subjects are willing participants in their objectification! Come on boys - you’re hurting a lot of women and yourselves at the same time. The bottom line is you just want to fcuk each other….

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I’ve decided that the challenge of articulating what I want to say about Jerry Springer the Opera is somewhat beyond me, at the moment. Apart from these few small comments….

I am glad it was done and Sydney got to see it. It was a somewhat hastily knocked together gig with a number of major imports for key roles. As a ‘cut and paste’ it was pretty flashy and impressive. But I can understand why some are disappointed we were not able to muster our own home grown rendition, if we were to do it at all. Not that I necessarily share this view. It could be a work that deserved no more creative attention than it got! And hey we got David Bedalla as Satan! Great performance - loved the suit!

David Bedalla (UK & Sydney productions): ideally suited for the role

I am not convinced outrageousness for outrageousness sake is an artistic value of intrinsic merit. Mind you I have made it my professional business to have visited a fair number of the seven circles of hell over the decades. So the show had a bit of a ‘been there done that’ quality to it (for me). Does Jerry Springer the Opera have anything else going for it beyond shock value – for those still capable of being shocked. Yes, the music/lyrics combo is outstanding in its inventiveness and creative vigour. But that is  largely a technical/craft achievement. Has anyone pondered to ask: what is this work actually trying to say?

IN POINT FORM

- I am very grateful to the Sydney Opera House for supplying me comp tix, and a special thanks to Claire Vince who always goes out of her way to do her best for me.

- I am glad the event was embraced enthusiastically by the public and the critical commentariat. But, in the best sense of ‘criticism’ - there has been virtually none to be seen (or read).

- Do I think the piece is a major work. For a moment in time – possibly yes! In the sense that it has broken down long-standing traditional boundaries as to what an opera can and cannot be – and can and cannot do.

- I think the locals in major roles in the show did excellent work. Even if Marcus Graham looked like he was ’slumming it’ in a role that showed off not a lot more than he has been going to the gym a bit of late.

- I believe even recent high quality Australian works like Keating & Shane Warne - The Musicals have been encouraged by the phenomenon of Jerry Springer.

- Did the show make a valid social point - or have genuine artistic merit? When it first appeared big-time on the West End. Very Possibly.

Lawrence Clayton, David Bedalla, Gale Edwards, Richard Evans, David Wenham, Richard Thomas and Sharon Millerchip - Opening Night Sydney

- Does it still possess the ’same’ cultural potency nowadays - in Sydney. I’m not convinced.

- Do I think JS - The Opera will survive the test of time. Possibly – but likely not for the reasons it is attracting accolades now.

- Does the opera whitewash the innate ‘banality/evil’, and in some way implicitly ‘give value’ to the TV show on which it is based? No comment.

Harvey Keitel plays Jerry in New York (but does not attend after party!)

- Do I think the Opera House was brave and gutsy putting the show on – yes.

- Do I support their innovative programing - yes.

- Do I think the SOH Marketing Department ought to be careful about how far they go when using new online forms of promotion? Definitely.

- Do think all shows ‘wired for sound’ to play the SOH Concert Hall face insurmountable acoustic problems for some seats (dead spots vary) - yes.

SUMMARY

In the context of the history of theatre in Sydney: Jerry Springer The Opera is a 2009 rerun of the Sydney Theatre Company’s 1983 production of Nicholas Nickelby. And those of you who were around in those days will remember what I said about that. Twenty-five years later, I’m not really interested in taking on that sort of ‘heat’. Besides, apart from broader cultural concerns, there was much to admire and enjoy about this show.

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MEANWHILE: MY NEW ENDING

Apologies to Pirandello, Tarantino, youth of today, the Gun Lobby, and various 1970’s ‘activist’ groups

Photograph of Patty Hearst in front of the insignia of the Symbionese Liberation Army holding an assault rifle. This image was taken during Hearst's time with the SLA and was released to the media to advertise that she had apparently joined their organization. Given its proliferation in the media, it has come to be the most recognizable image of both the SLA and Patty Hearst. According to court testimony, the gun is a modified full auto M1 Carbine with sawed-off barrel. Permission (Reusing this image) This photograph is of historical importance. It was released to the media as a form of publicity. The organization which took the picture, and the only possible copyright holder of this image, no longer exists

Just towards the end of Act One, a guy gets up out of the audience from the middle of the expensive seats, climbs past those in his row and walks ‘as if in a dream’ towards the stage. He looks like your average American high-school student. Junior High or Senior High, take your pick. He climbs up on onto the stage and pulls out a hand gun. The cast on stage freezes. Randomly chosen, we walks over and ‘pops’ one of the minor characters in the ear hole. They fall. None of the other characters attempts to flee - so ‘enthralled’ are they by the ‘reality’ of the moment.

Lone Gunmen Dolls

The school kid goes to the front of the stage and tells the audience to stay in their seat, explaining that there is no point attempting to flee the auditorium as the doors of the theatre are locked. Anyway, they are also spellbound. He then requires each cast member to nominate who is next (homage to Heath Ledger in Dark Knight) - either themselves or point to someone else. This scene takes as long as it has to until every one on stage is dead - ideally each has been shot in a different place on their body - chest, nose, throat, femoral artery. Some spurt, some explode blood messily, some are clean shorts.  Each character falls on a different way - a collection of homages to great movie death scenes.

Audience applauds wildly when all the actors then get up and take a bow.

The ’student’ then pulls out a high-powered automatic (aka an ‘assault’) rifle from under his jacket and points it at the audience. They laugh. The student puts his finger on the trigger and lets loose 50 rounds in 15 seconds, spraying the stalls, especially the ‘expensive seats’ (homage to Red Brigade, Baader-Meinhof, IRA and Symbionese Liberation Army). Even the group he came to the theatre with - family and friends - are not spared. Unfortunately these are real bullets and now dozens of decent theatre lovers lie sprawled across the lush seats of Sydney Opera House Concert Hall. Some are dead, others are dyng. Some have minor wounds. Hundreds are splashed with blood as pandemonium breaks out…etc….

Theatre critics are not spared!

For obvious reasons the official season is shorter than even the two-show New York season staring Harvey Keitel as Jerry. But that’s not the end of it. The evening news covers the event in  graphic detail, photos dominate the front pages of the next morning’s newspapers, etc, etc. So excited is the general public, they clamour en masse in the forecourt for more performances. Almost everybody in the city wants to see this show. Opera House management are confronted by a crowd scene from Les Miserables on their own door step!

School Shooting

A hurried meeting in the Marketing Department Bunker (a secret square room at under-water level that used to be The Recording Hall), and after several hours of heated debate, the air thick with cigarette smoke  (homage to Good Night and Good Luck) two options are arrived at:

Columbine

The first promises as long a run of the show as is needed to satisfy the demand, with random seats selected at each performance offering ‘free burial expenses’ if required.

Start'em Young!

Or (the second) a mass outdoor performance (homage to World Youth Day) guesting the current Pope in a ‘drive-by’ cameo, where everyone gets to drink free Kool-Aid (homage Jonestown) before shooting begins. This gives the adoring masses, otherwise known as the Facebook Friends of Jerry Springer (I am one!) a chance to die one of two ways - or both ways at once if we’re really lucky.

"Hell is other people..."

This new version also happens to spares audiences from having to wade through the second half. I don’t believe in an after life - I think that’s a cop out. And it’s not needed. Who was it who said: “Hell is other people….” And sometimes they’re sitting right next to you in the stalls!

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Okay the time has come to put aside the ugliness of some aspects of the real world and return to the lyricism and beauty, sometimes dark, we often find in good art. I want to write about two events I experienced last week which both stood as high watermarks, in the very least for the creative journeys of the artists involved. For audiences as well, both were very impressive experiences. The first I won’t bang on about for too long, but it was catching up at last with the movie Milk, the cine-biog of 1970s’ San Franscisco activist Harvey Milk. Many of you would have seen the film by now, or certainly would have heard about it. The accolades to Sean Penn are utterly deserved: it is a bold and beautifully nuanced performance that never distracts you from the story being told (a trait of the acting of someone like Al Pacino I greatly dislike). And not surprisingly Gus Van Sant’s sensibilities were entirely suited to embrace the heartfelt politics of this film.

Dustin Lance Black - Award-winning screenwriter for Milk

For any of you who watched the Academy Awards there was the astonishing sight and words from the film’s scriptwriter - Dustin Lance Black - a young man born into a Morman family who had taken the same difficult path to freedom himself that is mapped out in the film. After all the ugly images I have been putting up on this site of late here is one of an individual clearly blessed not only with a great talent but tremendous compassion and wisdom for his young years. There is a kindness in his face, quite at the other end of the spectrum from the one to confront me on the Parramatta train.

Sean Penn mainlining Harvey Milk

In a press interview with the Daily Bruin Black is quoted: “You hear people say, ‘This is my reason for being here. This is my compass.’ For me, that’s ‘Milk.’ I wanted to maybe inspire the younger generation to start becoming activists in a grassroots way. There’s a lot of stuff that still needs changing — not just gay rights.” For those of you unaware, Black was been a major writer on the powerful Morman-culture television series Big Love. He has several other film scripts produced and has directing ambitions as well.

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MY DARLING PATRICIA - NIGHT GARDEN

News

Closer to home it’s been a ‘gurl thang’, with a most impressive new work from the gorgeous ladies of My Darling Patricia, in a new work titled Night Garden. I caught it on the last night of a premiere Sydney season at Carriageworks. But there is an upcoming Melbourne Season:

To bludge from the troupe’s own website, “My Darling Patricia was founded in 2003 by Clare Britton, Bridget Dolan, Katrina Gill and Halcyon Macleod. The four founders approach theatre from backgrounds in dance, visual arts, circus, puppet making, film and spectacle performance. Taking its name from a faded 48-year-old love-letter found hidden in a discarded vanity set, My Darling Patricia draws inspiration from the epic visuals of Robert Wilson and Romeo Castellucci and the animation of Jan Svankmajer. A previous work drew high praise from no less an innovator than Robert Le Page.

“Viewed in traverse and using puppetry, film, sculpture and performance, Night Garden is a dark suburban tale that unfolds within the shell of a burned house.”

Night Garden - Model

The story played out focuses on the relationship between a teenage boy (Sam Routledge) and and older women - his mother? - presented on stage at the same time by the company’s current three core members - Halcyon Macleod, Clare Britton and Katrina Gill. Macleod takes a credit for original concept and writing, but all on stage have played their part in the creation of the piece at many levels, as has director/animateur Margaret Cameron: with other credits going to Declan Kelly (sound design), Sam James (film and video), Neil Simpson (lighting design & production management, Chris Ryan (dramaturg & practice consultant). Along with others equally worthy of mention: Tim McGaw and Nick Pledge (set development & set construction), Bryony Anderson (puppet maker), Wandjina (costumes and props), Jade Markham (additional 8mm footage), Cecily Hardy (woman in video). With the overall work produced by Marguerite Pepper Productions and My Darling Patricia. That’s a long list I know, for what, in essence is a small, if intensely multi-layered work: but, for once, it is impossible to unravel separate achievements. I think that is a compliment.

"A Fox went out on a windy night, he prayed to the moon to give him light..."

I’m not going to make a idiot of myself and try to ‘interpret’ the work. All I can say is that a series of seemingly random images that provoke subconscious agitation slowly gravitate to form a central force-field that speaks to an unhappy marriage in a surburban setting, leaving both wife/mother and child deeply scarred. if not everything is exactly clear, well perhaps that’s part of the work’s appeal because it certainly packs a subliminal punch. As for craftpersonship - every aspect of the production - the puppets, costumes, set, video, etc - all are beautifully made and excellently ‘of a piece’ when brought together to make the whole.

There was one point in the show when the women is attended to by ambulance officers after she has been brutalised by her husband. “What have you done to yourself?” one of the ambos inquires. In light of recent experiences, I found the line exceedingly droll. Momentarily a single choking laugh, my own, hung in the air.