The Christmas Blog 2014

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Flowers in Martin Place - a sad end to a tough year.

If you take the cynical view, and many will, the Sydney Siege and its emotional aftermath could not have come at a better time for Tony Abbott and his shop-worn and slightly soiled government. On the very day that 'Diamond Joe' Hockey and Mathias 'The Lying Dutchman' Corman were forced to face the  MYEFO music and admit that;

(a) the budget had been an unmitigated disaster scorned and despised by all and sundry, with every divide and rule, tax the poor, ploy rumbled, and;

(b) the mining boom magic-money-pudding that had made the Howard years so easy to tout as economically responsible had finally run dry, and;

(c) this government would never, ever produce a budget surplus no matter how many terms it managed to lie its way into;

~ and suddenly the biggest end of year slap-down for any government in living memory became just a side-show next to the reality of a genuine 'Muslim-terrorist, Dog-Day-Afternoon, fear and loathing in Sunny Sydney' horror show. The siege, its innocent and heroic victims, its brutal and 'just as crazy as we thought these terrorist bastards were' protagonist; and the nauseatingly over-hyped television news coverage, became the setting for Tony 'trust me I really don't know what I'm doing' Abbott to look by turns, concerned, caring, fatherly and genuinely human.

He didn't manage to pull off Prime Ministerial, decisive, or penetratingly insightful, but then, he hasn't done since he got the job, and it's been a bloody long year with a lot of turbulence in what should have been clear political air. The opportunity now hangs in the air for Tony to become Mr. Safe-at-any-price, Authoritarian Asio-bloodhound, 'fight them on the beaches of Sydney', 'no more Mr Nice Guy' right wing demagogue of punitive measures for the disaffected leavened with a healthy dose of refugee bashing. And the worse things get in every other part of his government's remit, the harder to resist that temptation is going to be with the likes of Brandis, Cormann, Morrison and co beating the drum..

The nation's cosseted private sector media will only be too keen to lead, follow and cheer on the charge. Channel 9's post siege news positively gloried in the grief and misery, with an emoting blonde anchor pronouncing the grief of those who lost family members beyond any compare, before switching briefly to the murder of more than a hundred children by the Taliban in Pakistan to round out the A block intro at the top of the hour.

The carpet of flowers grows as thousands arrive to deliver them in person

Don't get me wrong here. I don't discount for a moment how genuine the pain of loss for a murdered family member is. Nor do I think that one person's grief is worth more than another's. But at 57 I'm relatively sanguine. I wept at the heroics of a young man who gave his life to save others, while the loss of the Pakistani children didn't touch me quite as much. Their distance lending a sad diminution of one man's emotional response in which I took refuge without shame. I know just how much my heart can and can't take.

Yet I am touched by the carpet of flowers that now covers most of Martin Place (and is still growing). That people are still coming in person to place their floral tribute displays not just grief and sadness but the warmth, generosity and open-hearted fellow feeling that is the best part of the Australian national character. That and their honest willingness to act on what they feel. And I am cheered to be a part of that. The #Illridewithyou campaign begun on Twitter shows not just how generous and open-hearted Aussies can be, but just how smart, insightful and able to sort emotion from reality. Our young can clearly discern and act on truth in ways that clearly baffle some of our politicians.

Stephanie Speirs organised 1,000 #Illridewithyou badges to give to commuters

But all three commercial TV stations are guilty of telling us how to think, feel and react to every tiny nuance of pain, grief, horror and shock in ways that went far beyond the normal realms of yellow journalism. Perhaps from habit as much as ignorance they hype up the faux-emotional at the expense of the real. They narrow the human response to banal phrases that don't ring true, just familiar. They distort for banal effect and in doing so betray the genuine feelings and thoughts of those involved. Straight reporting took second place to the values of fear-mongering, sensation-seeking and emotional manipulation that underpin the trite 'current affairs' shows that follow the news, and inform the shock-jock blame-a-thons that will surely follow on radio in the weeks and months ahead. I hope I'm wrong. But I doubt it.

The Telegraph - always first with sensationalist fiction.

My concern, however, and surprisingly, is for Tony Abbott. All year he's removed one foot from his mouth only to kick himself firmly in the teeth with the other when his tried and tested political skills were seen through so easily and consistently by so many. It appears that Generations X, Y and Whoever's Next take it personally when lied to so obviously, and in such clear, declarative pre-election promises. That and the endless series of rabid hard-right economic kickings handed out to the non-rich section of Team 'Straya has not worked the way it once used to. Cynical Baby-Boomers may not have been surprised, even if they were outraged. But the young are apparently made of more idealistic stuff, and less inclined to forgive and forget within the time-frame of a first-term government whose credibility before any election can only ever be zero from here on in. 

But, be that as it may, I had thought I'd seen in Tony Abbott a certain stirring of thought, of reflection on how badly things have gone, and in particular on how 'new, caring, soft-spoken Uncle Tony' had failed to earn any warmth from the punters. It looked from the cheap seats that Tony had planned to be John Howard redux - the concerned paterfamilias PM who sat above the fray and seemingly above party politics allowing his ministers their head and only stepping in to curb their honest zeal with a wiser restraining hand when enough voters got shirty.

The problem that won't go away, even if Tony goes away.

In reality it's just an old dog-and-pony show; let the Ministers fly the kites and if all goes well let them run with it, and step in to cut the ribbon when all's done. Or shut things down if the kite crashes and burns. But it seems Tony believed in it. And finding out this year that:

(a) if you lie so egregiously you don't get the benefit of the doubt when you say 'trust me with the details', and;

(b) people really loved that sod Whitlam and every socialist thing he did that sort of 'worked' and gave people a better standard of living, and;

(c) people really do notice when you manage to slide a $1 billion worth of funding for the Catholic Church into an 'austerity budget', and;

(d) if you really don't care about economics enough to pay attention, and just let the Huns ride roughshod over the budget, well damnit, people blame you for it anyway!

It all kind of took the shine off getting the Big Job which was what you wanted in the first place. And then there was that few days in early December when Tony appeared to be taking all this in, and genuinely trying to rethink things. I actually felt for him, which surprised me no end. Not sorry for him, more fascinated in the way that watching a Labrador trying to understand pockets is.

For a while I thought he might actually spend Christmas trying to re-imagine himself as PM - not so much 'Father Tony the political priest' any more, and well, something maybe that was what he actually could be if he stopped being Mr Knuckle-Sandwich from sheer force of habit. Perhaps there were some glimmers of a genuine attempt to learn on the job and adapt to a new century, a new demographic picture of Team Oz, a new ..

Well, it really doesn't matter now. The siege, the posturing, the playing the role of Chief Wreath Layer and uttering the Warm, Caring Pre-Programmed Phrases at every camera in the land may have banished that moment forever. And soon we'll get the inquiries and the security ramp-ups and the blame giving and more right-wing politics as usual. 

 Which is a pity.

One-term Tony. 

Is all I want for Christmas, 2016.

Oh, and peace on Earth. Every year. 

Or at least some signs that the Angels Of Our Better Nature are on duty.

So, Merry Christmas. Hug your loved ones. Cherish your children. 

Take time for your own happiness amid the stress of it all. 

It's been a really tough year with too many good people lost.

With love, AofM

Theatre Reviews: "Phèdre" and "The Maids" Sydney.

"Phèdre" ~ Bell Shakespeare Company
Sydney Opera House.

The tag line on the poster advertising the Bell Shakespeare Company's production of Racine's Phèdre is "I have confessed an appetite that is unspeakable". Replace the word appetite with performance and you have the unspeakable truth. Last night's performance was one of the most entertaining experiences I've ever had in a theatre, for all the wrong reasons. This was so bad it transcended itself. It was hilarious, ridiculous, unbelievable. I absolutely loved it.

I won't name the actors. That would be pointlessly cruel. But I will say that they all began with the same affliction. They appeared to be spouting the Ted Hughes' translation while attempting to shit marble to ensure their classical integrity. Once this nervous start was over they settled into a series of disconnected monologues, competing with each other to sound as disconnected from the surging (presumably) emotions so well concealed in their heaving bosoms. And that was just the men.

Hippolytus fairly vibrated with suppressed something or other. Either that or he suffered from a mild attack of Parkinson's disease, interspersed with catatonic periods when he appeared to be channeling a primary schooler attempting to dislodge a thesaurus from his sinus cavity. Yes, I know that classical acting involved wearing a mask and declaiming with little actual movement. But there were no masks, beyond the binary code of alternating distemper and mild bilious attack.

Phèdre looks at Hippolytus like a mantis contemplating sex, or lunch.

Theramene, his mate, was more naturalistic, resembling a laconic Aussie auto-mechanic charged with delivering the fateful news about what the Gods have done to your gearbox. But he was a Tonto without a Lone Ranger. His ordinariness well-crafted, but wasted.

The ladies, ah, the ladies. Phèdre herself also suffered the binary affliction. She was either declaiming in a monotonous, and almost impenetrable gabble or SHOUTING, which would be all the passionate bits. In brief these were: Incest (technically), infidelity, remorse, guilt, shame, wretched abasement at the feet of  the object of her inflamed passion (Ooh, that looks nasty luv, I should get that seen to), despair, spiteful recrimination, self-pity, self-regard, self-disgust, self-regard (again).

She conquered them all with one technique: Veering between breathless decanting of her entire vocabulary and SHOUTING, SHOUTING REALLY LOUD and OCCASIONALLY HURLING HERSELF ONTO THE FURNITURE. Which showed stamina, but not discrimination. No nuance beyond volume, no light and shade beyond belting it out at full blast and then, not.

That was it really. 

The urge to yell, "Oh, for fucks sake, you're supposed to have the hots for this kid .. at least look at him and stop writhing on the floor like a limbo dancer with vertigo!" was hard to contain. But, in the finest tragedic tradition, I didn't give in.

The other ladies. Well, best left unsaid really. The blonde ingenue was well cast, and her hair was nice. Her mate was a 70s girl I once knew called Julie, who was enthusiastic but a bit dim. She nailed the accent, and the shoes. Beyond that, she has the kudos of working with Australia's premier classical theatre company, for what that's worth.

Phèdre's co-conspirator, Oenone, the nurse, almost destroyed the entire production, no doubt by accident. Her conspiratorial confidences were delivered with the suppressed excitement and breathless tones that would have been entirely appropriate in a pantomime. I stifled a snort in the first act, I didn't want to be the first to burst out laughing (cowardice on my part). Later, and the audience had thinned out considerably after the break, there was actual laughter scattered throughout the audience in the moments of high tragedy. The urge to yell out, "Oh no he didn't!" when she accused brave Hippolytus of rape was almost unbearable. Once that thought had crossed my mind it quickly ran back to centre stage and set up camp:

Mighty Theseus has returned!

"Look behind you! He's behind you!"

Hippolytus loves Aricia... 

"Oh no he doesn't!"

"Oh yes he does!" and so on...

The return of mighty Theseus provoked a slim hope that an actor we hadn't seen yet might prove immune to the endlessdeclamationofreallybigwords and the asking-a-question-and-not-waiting-for-an-answer-before-ploughing-on-with-the-monologue. But no. Striding manfully on in a cheap suit that was clearly too small he became mighty Theseus by SHOUTING LOUDER THAN ANYONE HAD SHOUTED BEFORE .. A LOT.. REALLY A LOT.. then appearing to nod off while listening to the harrowing account of his son's death. 

I haven't had this much fun in a theatre for years. 

On the positive side..? Hmm.

Well the set was nice, very Belle Époque, fin-de-sale at an Italian furniture importer. But if you're going to bring the set to somewhere within a bull's roar of Racine's period why update the costume to seedy Sydney nightlife circa 1993? Why dress an anorexic Phèdre in hooker heels? Why have the Chorus wear a blouse made from a David Jones' bag, and have a black bra underneath it's semi-opaque, 'suburban haus-frau on Valium hanging about a bit' look? She stood there for two hours looking like the lady from the perfume counter, lost without her samples.

The music crashed about to indicate the beginning and end of acts and scenes. God knows this was the only indication. The director (who had an assistant director who did God knows what) should be dragged behind a chariot until mighty Neptune, angered and aroused by mighty Theseus's outrage doest smite him with a mighty smiting, and anything else he can lay his mighty hands on.

Go see this play. Really. It's absolutely hilarious.

This afternoon it's Cate Blanchett and Isabelle Huppert in "The Maids". I can hardly wait.

Later... (suspense filled pause ...)

"The Maids" ~ Sydney Theatre Company.

What a difference a day makes, and a play that's attacked with gusto, and by talented actors in full command of their craft. Jean Genet's "The Maids" was totally different. Brilliant, brisk, powerful and demanding, and awash with talent, luxury, perversion, eroticism etc.. Opening in a plush rectangular apartment, a goldfish tank with real glass walls, there was no slowing down for the weak or hard of understanding. Blanchett and Huppert opened with Cate playing narcissism for all it was worth at a dressing table mirror and Isabelle, in her maid's outfit, lying on a bed and lazily swinging her legs in the air. Yoga, Pilates, open-legged eroticism and playful insouciance all before she's even stood up. Maybe it's being French and knowing what insouciance actually is. Maybe it's just good acting.

About ten minutes in and said  Isabelle Huppert takes Cate Blanchett by the hair, sticks her face in a toilet and flushes her powder and rouge away. The said Miss B rises pale and naked from the throat up splashed in nude horror onto a video screen hanging above the set. Outstanding. Honest, splashy and a wake up call for the audience. Things grew more progressively more perverse, kinky, slutty, bitter, angry, stupid, petty and mean-spirited from there on. Superb!

Madame ~ Elizabeth Debicki

When after half an hour the third character (Madame, the employer of our two ugly sisters) arrives you realize for the first time that whoever she is she's going to have to take up a dominating role as The Mistress against Blanchett and Huppert. You hold your breath.. Can she do it? Answer: Yes, with aplomb and style, self-satisfied, loud and utterly self-absorbed in that way the rich have. She prowls in in sunglasses and furs, direct from doing just that at Cannes. You breathe again.. 

 

Huppert is great, a small and intense Piaf figure mixing comedic touches seamlessly into a character without remorse, balance or contact with reality. By contrast Blanchett is loud, terrified of their mutual pact of twisted eroticism, and wracked with Catholic guilt. Lovely work, not overplayed, and yet still vulnerable when you least expect it.

 

"I don't know what normal is" … Isabelle Huppert. (She lies!)

 

The final scene reprises the Sado-masochism of  the first but takes it from a comedie of eros to deadly seriousness in a way that is both touching and filled with nihilism and despair, that spiritless yet animated state which is so hard to portray. Blanchett does it effortlessly, true to despair's own inertia and fatalism. Lovely work. I actually cared about what happened to her.

Huppert's accent is a struggle, but in a French play that's fine. It's our job to make the effort. She is by turns drab, bullying, and strangely alluring in her anti-heroic ordinariness. A harpy with human teeth, a charmless killer. She evokes the Monica Lewinsky response: how could someone so unimportant destroy lives and careers with her sick, inept and ultimately boring  but sexually charged irrelevance. You may not want to fuck her, but you're intensely curious as to why someone else might (the two maids fight over who gets the unseen gardener as a shag-object).

 

All told a tour de force in a little over two hours. Your money's worth and no mistake. See it if you can. These three actors will have long, large screen careers. Two already have. To see them work this hard, this well and manage to combine live theatre AND  film acting in one performance is a rare offering. You'll be glad you were there.