Upside down at the bottom of the world:
taking Richard Brome to the Antipodes
Arts Academy, University of Ballarat[Associate Professor Kim Durban is the Course Co-ordinator for Performing Arts at the Arts Academy, University of Ballarat, Australia. She is also a professional director of many years experience. In recent years she has twice directed a comedy by Brome with graduating students on the acting course, one of which was also performed in England. This essay contains her reflections of working as a director on Brome’s plays for Australian audiences. She was inspired in the framing device she uses by Max Stafford-Clark’s Letters to George (London: Nick Hern Books, 1989) in which he strikes up an imaginary correspondence with Farquahar while directing one of his plays.]IntroductionDear Richard Brome,I have just finished reading your new play, The City Wit. Whilst it is true that your command of dramatic structure is that of a fledgling, I am pleased to say that I found it a compelling read, which I finished in one sitting. The characters that you have gathered around your hero Crasy are truly vile in an excellent variety of ways, whether their lust, vanity or venality is on show. Crasy is very appealing, even though it is never entirely clear how much he is to blame for the debts which put him in such jeopardy; I love the way you describe him as “a young citizen falling into decay”. Australian audiences are bound to find him appealing, loving as they do cutting down tall poppies and rooting for the underdog. Crasy is obviously the underdog, but you leave it open as to the identity of the city wit- am I right in guessing that this is Jeremy? I found myself compelled by the strength of the writing for the women characters in this play, despite the fact that they exhibit mostly negative aspects. I guess this is the fun of it! You must have some great actors in your company. I’m not sure what kind of music you would like for your songs, since no tunes are indicated. I would like to discuss cross gender casting with you, since I do not have many boys. Please ring me to arrange a lunch appointment.
Yours sincerely,
Kim Durban.*1In 2007 I chose to mount the first production of The City Wit by Richard Brome in Ballarat, Australia, and this was possibly one of the first in the world since the original, seventeenth-century staging. Brome’s city comedy relates to contemporary times, especially through the lens of the upwardly mobile aspirations of a society focussed on money, shopping and good times. Ballarat, where I live, is a regional town which made its wealth in the gold rush of the 1850s. A gold venture is still in operation and may lead to future wealth, but the boom is long over. Brome sets his play in a town obsessed with gaining gold, and despite the intervening centuries, his sharply drawn characters such as a jeweller, a tutor and a merchant are redolent of our times. However, my interest was not in mounting a historically accurate performance, but rather something tailored for the present.Casting2As a director working with a graduating company of emerging actors, comprising a cast of ten women and five men, some cross-casting was inevitable, and choosing which way to go was intriguing. The women in The City Wit are sexy, venal and powerful. Pyannet, Crasy’s mother-in-law, is a leading force. She explains Sneakup, her husband’s silence by stating: “My husband is a man of few words, and hath committed his tongue to me [CW 1.1.speech52]”. In Australia, this would be well understood. The cliché of our BBQ culture is that men and women separate upon arrival, and each attends a slightly different party. At first I considered cross-casting Pyannet and Sneakup, but then realised that Brome has done this for me, since Sneakup, the husband, is silent and passive, whilst Pyannet, the wife, is bold and wild, described by the tutor Sarpego as “that woman of an eternal tongue” [CW 1.1.speech35].3In considering cross-casting, I was reminded of my own culture’s obsessions with drag. Priscilla, Queen of the Desert and the annual Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras in Sydney have gained enormous mainstream media coverage, followed by acceptance within popular culture. The suggestion is that these works encourage straight men in our society to embrace and fool around with a female persona, especially the garb and the make-up of a woman, in a darkly heightened way. It has been speculated that drag is the only way some straight Australian males feel comfortable to express a softer self. Could Sneakup and Pyannet be useful as drag performances?4Sneakup’s softer side is characterised by an almost wilful silence, so in the end I felt compelled to cast him male, leaving Pyannet to her own devices also. In The City Wit, the staged revelation of Tryman’s true nature was something I did not predict when reading the play for the first time. I wanted a solution that would allow my audience to be equally surprised, so I cast a woman as Jeremy and then made sure that Tryman looked like a male drag queen. I think audiences are used to seeing women play men, and accepting this. However, I once did some experiments with an audience and asked them to tick boxes about what they saw when men played women and women played men. I was sorry to discover that the audience saw exactly what was there, not what was implied, and that audience members did not always accept the subtler, intended meanings of staged ideas - they merely understood what was visibly evident. This discovery of course explained to me why some of my interpretive ideas didn’t work, and continues to influence my directorial practice.5I cast a boy as the female servant Bridget and a girl as Bridget’s male suitor Sarpego. Toby, Linsey-Wolsey and Jeremy were portrayed by girls, and the character of Crack became a three-piece girl band, which also allowed them to double as Tryman’s servants. All other roles were played gender-correct. Brainsex by Anne Moir and David Jesseln10853 informed my early thinking. Research discussions with the cast about pop, pretty boys and butch girls led to dictionary definitions of masculine as ‘dominant’ and feminine as ‘submissive’, yin and yang, androgyny, heteronormity, bi-sexuals, pansexuals…we did not run out of material!6I needed a world to decant these ideas into. In transferring the world of the play from 1630, I thought it essential to replicate the social ladder. The place of The Citizen, The Gentleman and The Prince are continually emphasised, modulated and calibrated in The City Wit. Toby, Crasy’s young brother-in-law, is as full of advice as hot air, and teaches Linsey Wolsey the aspirant social climber thatA citizen can never be a gentleman till he has lent all, or almost all his money to gentlemen. […] When I myself was a gentleman first, my money did so burn in my pockets, that it cost me all I ever had, or could borrow, or steal from my mother. […] take heed of spending it on anything but panders, punks and fiddlers; for that were most unfashionable [CW 2.3.speech237] and [CW 2.3.speech245].7So I thought of rock music, always characterised by movements upwards and downwards, obsession with money and how getting access to the inner sanctum of Court mimicked the impossibility of gaining a Backstage Pass. I started to remember glam-rock with its unisex fashions and something clicked. I became completely captivated by the possibilities. Much of our final interpretation was influenced by one of Australia’s most famous bands from the 1970s, Skyhooks, whose lead singer Shirley (that’s Graham to his friends) wore tight satin and sang in a helium-high voice: You just like me cos I’m good in bed.n10854 This sounded too much like Crasy’s wife Josina to be true.Figure 1: Cast of The City Wit, directed by Kim Durban 2007.
Photography by Francis Greaves.
Notes on an Australian Approach to the Classics8Graeme Murphy, former Artistic Director of the Sydney Dance Company has said that you can always spot an Australian dancer, because when they make an arm movement it seems to go on forever. He puts this down to the impact of our vast horizon. I think it is also true of the Australian acting style, in that the body takes precedence over the words. We have a fruity vernacular that is fast disappearing as we adopt global vocabulary. This means young actors frequently struggle with formal texts, and are really confused rather than elated when they first experience complexity of thought in dialogue. Patsy Rodenburg has written and spoken wisely about the modern habit of de-voicing, which she puts down to the impact of television and the adoption of a kind of microphone technique as a mode of normal speech.9In locating the production of The City Wit in the 1970s, I hoped it would delight my audience, and boost the comic possibilities, allowing the crowd to appreciate what a good playwright Brome really is. I am aware that the new “tradition” of Australian Shakespeare is The Bell Shakespeare Company’s tendency to broaden and localise the sound and meaning of the text. This approach was first created by director John Bell in a highly successful production of Much Ado About Nothing at Nimrod Theatre in 1974, about which he states,I was determined to stop the actors putting on the plummy ‘Shakespeare’ voice we had been brought up with. I suggested we rehearse the play with mock-Italian accents- a parody of the Australian/Italian ‘greengrocer’ voice…Audiences were delighted with the result, but one or two critics had to carp. They assumed that I was out to ‘send up’ or trivialise Shakespeare.n1085510Bell’s work has been seen by young people all over Australia. The translation of the classics into a recognisable modern idiom is the only way my trainee actors really follow the story, because they have no other reference points. So Romeo and Juliet are understood if they come from different racial groups, or Prospero’s spirit world can be justified if it is Aboriginal. I used to resist such aesthetic choices as being too easy for the director, since the plays get ironed out until they only have one colour and mono-meaning. However, I am more compassionate about allowing the audience easy access into the glories of style, since I moved to a regional University. Sixty percent of my students are the first person in their family to go on to higher education, and we perform for their families and friends. Like all audiences, ours are highly alert and mixed socially, but they are starved of a rich diet of theatre and sometimes lack reference points. My first production in Ballarat was Richard the Third set in the world of real estate, with war on the golf links. The City Wit is all about pulling down people with pretensions, revealing their aspirations as hollow, balancing the benign effect of our hero Crasy’s kindness with the bitter flame of ambition and greed in those around him. As I predicted, an audience largely made up of convict descendents had a healthy respect for this play.11I removed swathes of text out of the play, reducing its running time from three hours to two hours, trying to keep the flavour and momentum of Brome’s design, whilst shaving repetitions, obscurities and large amounts of Sarpego’s Latin quotations. Some sequences are wonderful but seem unnecessary to young actors. A problematic example is Rufflit’s outburst of philosophy in Act 4: it is a brilliant set-piece where he revels in some scathing criticisms of society, but for our production it was too foreign.Staging12Our thrust stage suited well the kind of close connection to audience that Brome wrote for, the ‘round’ that is mentioned in the Prologue. Brome uses asides to keep the plot moving: they are a constant feature of this play, in which characters talk to the audience as much as to each other. There is an explosive quality to the rhythm of the writing and a strong energy, which requires that actors make definite decisions in their choice of focus. One example is Act 2 Scene 3 where a coaching session on gentlemanly behaviour, given by Toby for the benefit of Linsey-Wolsey, is set against a gossip session about the new widow between Rufflit and Ticket. The cross- current of dialogue flies between members of this quartet, as they pair up to gossip within the audience’s hearing. This requires rapid delivery from the actors and gives the audience a double focus to their field of vision. My modern audience found these ‘jump-cuts’ easy to embrace. I added a silent Lady Ticket shopping in the background, in order to underline Ticket’s status as her lap-dog, and his gall as a married man in having to compete with the other men for a mistress.13The City Wit can be staged with only a chair and a table (we dispensed with the bed that Brome’s stage directions require the sick Widow Tryman to be displayed in throughout 3.1). Typical of its period, it does not rely on scenic illusion and utilises rapid shifts of time and place. Sarpego’s line “This is The Presence [CW 3.4.speech479]” is enough to identify that we have gone to court. I have collaborated now with designer John Bennett on two Brome plays, and his wit is in evidence in the fluffy cushions and purple paint finishes we used. In my glam-rock production, The Presence was a club indicated by the silken ropes needed to control a crowd. An orange sculpture, vaguely phallic in shape, was wheeled from place to place, used by various characters to hide behind, and in the denouement, hid Crasy himself behind a secret door. Costume is richly allusive. Our Pyannet was a Versace diva. “Enter Sarpego in gorgeous apparel (3.4.)” is a delicious invitation to a costume designer. Crasy had to go through five costume-changes, putting these on and then peeling them off, in order to accommodate his rapid changes into a soldier, Dr Pulse-Feel, Master Holywater and a dancing master.14Structurally, the play contains a number of set pieces between duos and trios, and our investment in these characters is laid at the beginning. Act 1, Scene 1 is an artfully composed scene that is fiendishly difficult to stage. It uses a device that Brome repeats throughout the play - the scene starts with intimacy, swells to accommodate a crowd and ends with a just one character, Crasy’s wife, Josina. This scenic structure, requiring the stage to fill and empty with a flow and ebbing of characters, continues throughout the play. This is most notably the case in Tryman’s sick room (3.1.), which is invaded by more and yet more stickybeaks anxious to learn the contents of her will; and later in Act 5, when Crasy takes pause to consider his successes and is then overrun by Toby’s wedding procession.15I wanted to establish a rather excessive world driven by a party energy in the opening act that has inevitably to flag, which heralds the collapse of so-called domestic harmony in Crasy’s world. There is a melancholy desperation in Crasy’s rapid assessment of his debts and the potential outcome. I decided to push for a fairly frantic tone from Crasy all the way through, as he calculates his losses and confides in his servant Jeremy. This set up the energy for his rock-star world and allowed us to race with him through long sequences of self-doubt at the beginning, which seemed repetitive on first acquaintance with the text.16I staged the second part of this scene as an after-dinner entertainment, with Crasy as the victim. The dinner party guests arrived laughing and carousing and flooded our thrust stage at all entrances, introducing the audience to their bullying. Dialogue is guided to its conclusion by Pyannet, but contributing voices come from all over the stage. (Brome loves a cavalcade.) For the director, the challenge is to stage the group-takeover as mob action, whilst keeping their individual contributions crisp. Josina, Crasy’s wife, takes a curious role in these proceedings. She says nothing until most of the characters depart, then reveals her true nature to be venal and sexual, whilst playing fond farewells with her husband. I chose to emphasise her physical attributes, and the actress added KISS-like make-up.17Brome is confident in the way he handles intense comic interaction. In Act 4 Scene 2 he has written a most spectacular altercation between Pyannet and Lady Ticket. This scene is a stadium piece, which demands a bravura style. In my version, Pyannet wore a lot of ‘bling’ and Lady Ticket was more poised in black, allowing the audience to relate to their ‘types’ in modern terms. In rehearsal, I used one of Mike Alfreds’ exercises many times, the ten minute exercise. This demands that the actor work solo without interaction, or intervention, on one aspect of character, for ten minutes in silencen10856. We investigated servitude, shopping and attitudes to fame and the paparazzi. One of my instructions that proved fruitful was “spend ten minutes in character admiring and appreciating yourself”. It produced a good level of display, smugness and infectious laughter that was very useful for the characters in this scene.18The size of the language needs great energy from actors, and they reported that it was difficult to learn. It was challenging to find staging which could tell the story and release the scene, since I wanted to keep the flavour of pop mayhem and excess alive in the space, and the scene between Pyannet and Lady Ticket felt like a backstage catfight between two groupies. The real weapons are in the language, as Lady Ticket and Pyannet move from “strumpet” and “flirt” to “harlot” and “rammy nastiness”. Pyannet and Lady Ticket attempt to wound by name-calling and revealing one another’s intimate confidences, to the horror and delight of the listeners. By staging this like a bullfight, with each circling the stage and then pouncing upon her victim, I believe that I allowed the audience a visual metaphor for the verbal build-up. Australian audiences do not respond to purely language-based action, no matter how intricate and developed. However, keeping the protagonists separate until the punchlines allowed the text to live. When it came to weapons, we could only substitute, since the ‘truncheon’ prescribed in Brome’s stage direction (see that for Pyannet’s entrance following speech 660) did not suit our world, and we tried a few versions of Pyannet’s mayhem using fake weapons before deciding eventually upon her wielding a stapler, which the audience found hilarious. (We found and used a blow-up cudgel for the beating of first Rufflit and then Ticket in 5.1.)19The world of the play was supported in rehearsal by exercises examining seventeenth-century polite behaviour, from promenading to bowing, and we developed our own seventies period-code with a mix of dance moves, fans and mobile phones (a nod to our 2007 audience). Crasy’s “slidings, falling-back, jumps, closings and openings [CW 4.1.speech552]”, where he is instructing Josina in a variety of dance steps, are just made for pop!MusicDear Richard B,I really wish you would be more consistent about the music in this play! Crack arrives without any warning in 2.2 and proceeds to give us a series of bawdy ballads from the past. The script goes a little wobbly here — who is this guy? I like the shock value, but I’m not sure it will pay off later. Then he is all melancholy and formal in announcing the illness of Tryman. In Acts Three and Four, he makes up his own songs. But the Page is asked to sing a song of the Court’s delights and you do not give me any words, let alone a tune. Am I to believe that it doesn’t really matter to you what songs we use; or is it more important to use something the audience will recognise? It’s a bit of a stylistic blancmange, Richard — have you worked with musicians before? Please reply at your earliest convenience, since there is copyright to consider.
Kim.*20Rather than being decorative, Brome uses music to advance the plot, and for me he anticipates the way song is used in story-musicals in our own time. Sometimes Brome does not specify the music, merely that there should be some. But with the character of Crack, he is mostly prescriptive. Crack, a young boy, is actually Jeremy’s brother in disguise, and he exhibits a prodigious ability to comment on the action with balladry. When Crasy first meets Crack, he comments that he is a “young sucking-pig pimp [CW 2.2.speech205]” and there is a curious mix of the sacred and the profane in Crack’s songs, which appear to be improvised. Crack is not mad, but merely in disguise; he is a wondrously strange character, and he remains largely mysterious to the audience until the end when Jeremy introduces him rather casually as his brother, Jeffrey. He has an acting ability that rivals Jeremy’s and is able to think on his feet. He reminds me of Coquin the Clown in Calderon’s The Surgeon of Honour (1635), who has to make the King smile or forfeit his life. When Linsey-Wolsey catches Crack, he threatens to arrest him unless he can sing the correct type of song. After a few failed numbers — which are not specified in the text- Crack sings about Linsey- Wolsey himself; and when this proves acceptable, he is released from the beadles. Crack’s music is always streetwise in its reliance on ballads and improvisation. For our interpretation I drew on pop song as a possible equivalent. Deliberately, there was no pretty music here.Questions of Identity21Brome seems to be very clear eyed about human foibles. His subtitle The Woman Wears the Breeches can work as a comment on the Jeremy /Tryman disguise, but it also seems appropriate as a signpost for the marriages in the play, especially that of Pyannet and Sneak-up. The women are all controlling, but with individual styles. Pyannet continually reconstructs her power by instructing others about what she expects, and congratulating herself on her wit and intelligence. She has also cozened Crasy of his best jewels, and thus accelerates his fall. Lady Ticket is indeed a wicked creature in her capacity to keep others circulating about her, and seems to symbolise pleasure for others. Josina is both cunning and naive, given to opportunism and unable to read. Bridget is knowing, wise and opinionated. The male characters are seen to be at their mercy, led by a continual need for sexual gratification and compliments. It is highly amusing to see Sarpego begging for marriage and acceptance from Bridget, Ticket dangling from the balcony and beaten in revenge for his pursuit of Crasy’s wife, and to witness Toby’s come-uppance as he discovers himself married to a man. What is refreshing about Brome’s world view is that he does not judge his characters,.22The question to be posed is: who is the “City Wit”? Crasy takes advantage of his fallen position and wreaks vengeance on everyone, revealing in the process a witty talent for turning people’s weaknesses into weapons against them. Jeremy fools everyone, even his master. Bridget, although she is a minor character, is a servant (like Brome himself) and a survivor, and can be celebrated for her wit in choosing the creative Crack over the venal Sarpego. Is Crasy named so because he contrasts with everyone else in this greedy world? Or is it because he offers benevolence to a cracked universe and his choices have made him mad? Is Brome poking fun at the world of gain, or suggesting Crasy should ‘get real’ and join in? Crasy is undiscovered in his trickery (till he chooses to reveal his schemes) and ends up richer than Croesus, which is indeed witty of him, given his initial fall. Jeremy triumphs, through teaching his master much that he learns of the world. In the end Crasy rises; but with a family like his there is not much hope of true repentance. This is a world where we cannot imagine what will happen to the characters next.23There are some Caroline aspects to the play which are truly delightful, and resist updating. One of these is the scene in Act 3 where Pyannet instructs Sneakup in his approach to the inner sanctum of the Prince (the Presence). Her detailed and complex instructions for a bare or covered head are a contemporary joke about the internecine labyrinth of court behaviours. We also hear a protracted contribution from Sneakup for the first time; indeed get to know his voice, revealed in the private intimacy of the marriage. As a director, I found myself responding to the complete dagginess of this scene and the play; that is, the naivety and charmlessness, although it is hard for me to translate ‘dag’. This Australian term truly describes one of Brome’s comic strengths: an interest in the unsophisticated vulnerability and needs of his characters, the selfish, winsome and venal drives which put them into ludicrous situations.24My choice to use the world of glam-rock for The City Wit may seem to soften the edges of the final blow — seeing a man in woman’s clothing. We need to remember that, just like seventeenth-century critics such as William Prynne, those who received the first music and messages from men wearing makeup and women cased in leather were genuinely shocked and afraid. I believe Brome’s play to be a savage indictment of conservative morality and greed: The City Wit is a complex diatribe against growing trends within his own society, where rich were divided from poor by ever-escalating codes of polite conduct and the shunning of decent human values. I believe we are also living in such a world. As our own economy teeters and totters, I know this to be a comedy for our times.The Antipodes25In April 2008, I mounted a second play by Brome. It is inevitable, given my Australian location, that I would stage The Antipodes, which was originally staged in 1638 at a mature point in Brome’s career as a playwright, and at a period of growing political crisis for England. It tells the story of a young man, Peregrine, who is obsessed with travel. He is brought to Doctor Hughball for a cure, in the house of Lord Letoy. In treatment, Peregrine is drugged and, when he wakes up, is made to believe that he has been asleep for eight months and has now travelled to the Antipodes. What follows as he journeys through the land is actually a play performed by Letoy’s private company of actors.26Brome’s play seems to have more twists and turns than any opera, yet its design is masterful and assured. After working on the earlier play The City Wit, I could feel Brome’s experience as a playwright at work in The Antipodes and his increased confidence in blending the domestic and the epic is evident. The melding of the interests of family and society is complete, so that all the lessons Peregrine learns in the Antipodes are particular to his needs, yet provide the audience with an acute commentary on the proper design of an ideal state. The idea that healthy sexuality can cure imbalance seems very modern, and in one way the play can be viewed as holistic, bringing harmony out of chaos through tribulation.27The devices Brome uses to present his story are sophisticated, especially the layering of realities onstage. Direct address is once again used to invite the audience into the action, and Brome seems to relish the way the actors are required to multi-skill in managing simultaneous focal points, especially as Letoy’s party watch the play and end up in it. The notion that the audience is watching a play about an audience watching a play is intensely intriguing to me in being seemingly Brechtian, if not post-modern. For the director, this raises the issue of where to put the Letoy party. Despite my instinct to place them in with the real audience, I found that I had to separate them from spectators, so that the audience may observe their participation and focus on the significance of their interruptions of the drama. Having no similar device for the face- masks prescribed by Brome’s stage directions, we used sunglasses.Figure 2: The Letoy party discuss the play, Act Three, The Antipodes,
directed by Kim Durban 2008.
Photography by Bronwyn Pringle.
28The compression of time and place common in plays of this period is indicated, with a series of banquets and breaks provided by Letoy seeming to show that the action takes place over a full night, resolution coming with the dawn. Joyless complains of this eking matters out. There are many vignettes of upside-down life in The Antipodes, using a flurry of absurd characters presented in a high comic style, in which they perform Brome’s typically idiosyncratic dialogue, all of which Peregrine takes literally. This is a comedy of instruction. It is virtually impossible for a contemporary Australian audience to relate to the picture of an alternative society that Brome presented to his Caroline audience in his vision of an antipodean world, packed as it is with references to seventeenth-century civil unrest and good government models, which we cannot access without a deep knowledge of English history. Yet a contemporary audience can relate to the illness and cure of Peregrine.29The shift to a serious tone in the final Act is somewhat confusing at face value. The revelation of Diana’s parentage is covered with great rapidity. Suddenly Peregrine is restored and we are at a celebration. It feels to me that Brome’s interest is in the concept of Family, and that he must provide a real threat within the comedy to earn our interest in these characters and their healing. The masque concludes with the banishment of Melancholy. Thus the strands of medicine, madness and family bonds come together. The fifties interpretation I eventually decided upon allowed the emphasis to lie with family archetypes: Peregrine in shorts agitating against his father, Joyless, who is dressed in a formal suit; the worldly Barbara in a cocktail dress with Martha, Peregrine’s demure wife, clad in gingham. Martha clutched a doll to symbolise both her longing for a child, and her child-like nature. (Peregrine in his madness has failed to consummate their marriage.)Figure 3: Martha and Barbara, Act Two, The Antipodes,directed by Kim Durban 2008.
Photograph by Bronwyn Pringle.
Blind and Sighted Interpretation30In setting forth to direct an unknown classic play, the director must be equipped with the tools necessary to break the code and translate it for a new audience. These tools can include historical research, pictorial images, verse and prose analysis via theatrical knowledge, and intuition. They cannot include, in Brome’s case, physical evidence of prior performance or anecdotal evidence from the original. The director is blind when it comes to precedent. What creates an open gaze capable of ‘seeing’ the play is the study of the text and the action.31My initial reading of The Antipodes alerted me to some strangely Australian details: the mention of football, the delivery of a dinner across the stage (could this be a BBQ?), a question about black swans, the fact that Letoy dresses down even though he is wealthy. For quite some time I imagined that I would set the entire play in a 1950s Australia, since I wanted to locate the production in a historical time when the concept of a ‘lord’ still had meaning, and this seemed the latest date possible, with Letoy imagined as a wealthy grazier. Letoy’s servants, doubling as actors, (whom the cast quickly nicknamed The Hautboys) are everywhere, and he boasts of their multi-skilling in poetry, sports and acting. I saw them initially dressed as a local Australian Rules football team, after finding an early sports photograph and admiring the charming striped jerseys and period football boots. But unfortunately I was unable to make this work, once I realised that the journey to the Antipodes was symbolically a trip to the Underworld, and denoted an utter switch of location to somewhere “rich and strange”, which could only be Australia.n10857 It therefore became important to specify the contrast through the context of the first location. Consequently I decided the setting should be late 1950s London, with all that this implies about post-war England, while the Antipodes was a historical version of Australia.32My past productions of the classics have been updated in design terms, using modern references . Brome has an acute sensibility attuned to the nuances of city living, and he peppers his plays with metropolitan ‘types’, allowing the director to engage with their social function, as well as their personal characteristics. In The Antipodes, his interest is engaged by the sad Joyless family, and the bizarre Lord Letoy who leads them from the maze of their emotions into the promise of a healthy future.Figure 4: The Watch, Act Four, The Antipodes,
directed by Kim Durban 2008.
Photograph by Bronwyn Pringle.
33The Antipodean world I located in Australia at an important turning point: 1789 at Botany Bay, in a fictional “New Chum”n10858 colony. I was influenced by Brome’s writing of an inverted social order and believed that my audience would make this connection with the early Australian colony. I found that Brome’s rambunctious mix of officials, powerful women, mealy-mouthed leaders and masterless men seemed to mirror our own imagined antipodean colony, and allowed me to set up a commedia-style universe. This was important for the establishment of an acting style for the play-within-a-play, which was eventually characterised as nasal, broad, pantomimic and highly gestural. In this, I was influenced by thinking through the implications of Lord Letoy having his own acting company in the nineteen fifties, and the slightly histrionic acting style of the times, especially in late nineteen forties and early fifties film noir.34I remain ambivalent about the fact that my conclusions implied a very British world at the beginning of our production, but I saw that North Country accents were very helpful in establishing the ‘country-cousin’ aspects of the Joyless family. It is a sad truth that even Australians cannot necessarily distinguish regional accents in their own country. Given the national trend for directors in Australia to contemporise the classics, I have often followed this tendency, especially when preparing productions for a young and naïve audience. The function of the director is thus to act as ‘code breaker’ for the audience, and since many young people no longer study history or poetry, the need for this assistance is becoming a pressure in preparing classical texts for reception. One member of 2007’s audience for The City Wit reported that she failed to follow what people were saying because she lacked experience with the classics, but she enjoyed “the visuals” which assisted her.35In the case of The Antipodes, I knew that the Caroline world would be foreign to its Australian audience, and hoped to be able to stir cultural connections about layers of society through the lens of the 1950s. I believe that the world of black-and-white film was relevant as an influence, since I found that the costumes and set decoration reminded my actors of ‘old movies’, and despite the vagueness of this reference, it helped them.Figure 5: Diana and Barbara watch the play-within-the play, Act Two of The Antipodes,directed by Kim Durban 2008.
Photograph by Bronwyn Pringle.
*“That I like well. Why should not our old menLove their young wives as well?” [AN 2.2.speech348]36The fifties concept had prime influence over the aesthetic of Lord Letoy’s house, bringing in hats, heels and decoration to Acts 1 and 5. This setting also indicated behaviours for the actors to adopt, including upright posture, modest gestures and gender-specific notions of politeness such as glove and scarf manipulation, curtseys and lowered eyes. There is an implied tension in this, since the fifties was also the era in which women’s emancipation was beginning to stir, and I found the conservatism a useful correlative for Barbara’s irony about marriage conventions, Diana’s bad behaviour and Martha’s desperation.37In talks with the designers, I reflected on the paintings of contemporary Queensland painter William Robinson as an influence for me about the look of the antipodean world. Robinson paints the trees, skies and land space of Australia in a naïve manner, with the viewpoint of the human eye looking upwards on nature, painting directly what he sees and not correcting the perspective. The elliptical images which result are bathed in Australian blue, umber, coral, ochre and olive. I related this to the unformed view of Peregrine Joyless as he “arrives” in the Australian landscape and “sees” the alien world. We viewed many of Robinson’s works, and this influence made its way into the colour palette for lighting and costumes, and the semi-circular arrangement of the audience who travelled to the Antipodes. Set Designer John Bennett’s wit was in evidence with the setting crowned by a collection of Georgian furniture hanging upside down in the “sky” over the action. This decision to make the upside down world of the Antipodes visible was a metaphor and framing device for the metatheatricality of Brome’s action. It also suggested the crazy jumble of furniture that might eventuate with a long sea voyage. (The dates 1788 and 1789 projected as shown in the photograph on to the suspended jumble relates to the founding of white Australia.)Figure 6: The Antipodes, directed by Kim Durban 2008.
Detail of John Bennett’s hanging Georgian furniture; lighting design and projection by Bronwyn Pringle.
Photograph by Bronwyn Pringle.
38Actors now cannot watch the original Caroline company, and are no longer taught their approach to acting skills through an apprentice system of demonstration from master actor to apprentice, such as we believe obtained in Brome’s theatre. Therefore the director is responsible for establishing the conventions of the performance. These conventions may be physical, rhythmic, emblematic, symbolic or emotional. Theatre historians believe that the style of renaissance plays in action was influenced by the fashion for oratory and that a strongly gestural approach was needed for the vast spaces actors inhabited:…examples…suggest that a code of conventional gestures that were readily associated by the audience with specific emotional states was also available to the actors…..Exactly what (if indeed anything specific) the playwright had in mind, or the actors actually did, is irretrievable.n1085939Without such records, therefore, this production is not a re-construction, but an invention.Diana and Her True Nature“I never saw a play and would be loathTo lose my longing now.” [AN 2.1.speech285]Figure 7: Diana and her husband Joyless, Act 1 of The Antipodes,
directed by Kim Durban 2008.
Photograph by Bronwyn Pringle.
40It is challenging to decide which way Brome wants his audience to view the major female character, Diana. As Steggle points out in his writings about The Antipodes, “its characters seem to wear their subconscious sexual urges almost on their sleeves”.n1086041Diana is young, possibly younger than Peregrine, yet married to his father, who is repeatedly described as “old Joyless”. It is never stated until the end whether they love each other. Her first comments are skittish, flighty and enthusiastic, as she bursts in to interrupt the therapy session with Dr Hughball. She seems as interested in his tall tales as Peregrine. She takes to Letoy’s attentions like a duck to water, and it seems as if she lives in an unhappy marriage; yet Diana is feisty with her husband, and her energy with him is that of an independent reformer.42 I believe that Diana’s true nature is the determined young woman we meet in Act 5, and there are clues to her true self scattered through the action of the first four Acts. She has never seen a play, and is very excited to be included. She seems to have a sensible view of the world, comparing some of the Antipodean experiences she witnesses favourably to those at home. Her commentary is also used by Brome to focus the attention of Peregrine- and thus the audience — on matters pertinent to our understanding of the play-within-a-play. Shse copes admirably with the role reversal of her trusted ally, Letoy, when turns betrayer. As she bests Letoy, so she reveals her birth and heritage, and it should not be a surprise to discover that Diana is in fact Letoy’s daughter. That it isa surprise is testimony to the power of the comedy that has gone before, and the fact that we are not primed to expect more plotting at such a late stage in this play.43Diana’s true nature is that of the ruby beyond price — she has a triumph indeed, but it is the triumph of virtue tested, loyalty rewarded and machinations overturned. In this, the play links with the dramatic denouement of The City Wit, in which Crasy, the supposed fool, vanquishes his foes. Diana has very little to say following the revelation of her birth, only two lines which give very little away.44Gerald Freedman, Master of Play (director) for the Globe production in 2000, describes the reconciliation scene as “preposterous but delightful”.n10861 Matthew Steggle is more alert to the ambiguities of this rushed reconciliation with Letoy:[T]he audience may find that the later revelation that he was only pretending, since he knew or half-knew Diana was really his own daughter, is not perhaps as comforting as comic decorum demands.n1086245Staging this scene was very challenging, requiring us to engage with an imagined incident off-stage between Letoy and Diana. We could never find a jocular tone that worked, and I know subsequently that some in our audience were repulsed by the notion that he was her father, believing as they did in the latent sexuality of the episode. I think the easy access provided by contemporary clothing affected how this sequence was played, especially since my actress had chosen as her character animal ‘a doe’, which translated into a teetering and precocious walk in her high heels. In the playing, she felt herself unable to recover from the shock of the revelation, and the masque was necessary to create the sense of an uplifting end. This is no doubt a reflection of our modern way of acting, which does not value the protection of social order over personal responses. Perhaps too it was a consequence of introducing 1950s social values onto our stage. Whether this is the ‘right’ tone for Brome’s conclusion we cannot know, since inevitably we look at his comedy through the lens of post-feminist readings.“Yet, yet I prithee, yield. Is it my personThat thou despisest?” [AN 5.2.speech984]Figure 8: Diana is confronted by Letoy, Act Five, The Antipodes,
directed by Kim Durban 2008.
Photography by Bronwyn Pringle.
*Letoy as Prospero“Are you the first that answers to that name?” [AN 2.1.speech247]Figure 9: Lord Letoy directs his actors, Act Two, The Antipodes,directed by Kim Durban 2008.
46When we first meet Letoy, the stage direction describes him as ‘shabbily dressed’. Blaze describes the reaction of the town:They say, my lord, you look more like a pedlar Than like a lord, and live more like an emperor.[AN 1.2.speech109]47Letoy then explains his personal frugality and the social fabric of his city house, favourably comparing his actors (who double as servants and sportsmen) with the more costly displays and entertainments mounted by others. Letoy is boastful, allowing Brome to provide quick and colourful exposition, and encapsulate Letoy’s reality in a very short scene. Despite his outward appearance, Letoy is a lord of all: first as the Master of Revels in his own house, providing all the scripts for his resident acting company, and second in setting standards for how people should live, himself and others. In Act 2, Scene 1, he is seen giving direction to his performers in a scene reminiscent of Hamlet’s advice to the players. He is not hesitant over interfering in the lives of others in similar ways. Doctor Hughball calls him the lord of fancy, a term he dismisses. But it is quite clear that he is the Director. His commentary to the actors continues as the play-within-the-play unfolds, and one rarely loses awareness that this whole event is an entertainment he has constructed. I know from staging the play that the audience see Peregrine as a sympathetic character, and someone for whom they hold regard and empathy. I do not believe Letoy to be sympathetic to them in the same manner, although we can enjoy his playfulness and invention.48It is clear from numerous references to the plays that Brome was familiar with the dramatic works of Shakespeare. The more I worked with this character, the more I saw Letoy as a comic reflection of Prospero in William Shakespeare’s The Tempest. He has held onto emotional resentment for seventeen years, waiting to strike. Whilst he does not have actual magic powers, he manages to control others through his status. I gave him a conductor’s baton, to allow him to point at and direct others. He wore a faded cricket jacket, which with his neglected clothing was designed to show him as an overgrown school boy. He is served and fawned upon in an artificially captive environment, where the Doctor, Quailpipe and Byplay work to please him, bringing back reports just like Ariel, which cause Letoy to create or refine plot developments. His house seems like an island where none may intrude. He is also vain and given to losing his sense of humour, naming others ‘Blockhead!’ or ‘Cockscomb!’ when matters do not go his own way, mirroring Prospero’s explosiveness when he discovers he is not in control of his guests. Letoy redirects the play’s action in order to resolve mistakes made by his servants, and he takes on a central role in the betrothal ceremony, restoring order and shaping the improvisation so that Peregrine will do as he (Letoy) requires. His asides and kisses for Diana and barbs poised for Joyless indicate the actions of one who needs to keep control, and who has rigidly divided the good from the bad.49Yet these are games and, in a more serious way, they reflect the fact that Letoy is ultimately cold through his hatred of adultery. His real testing of Diana is confronting and brutal. His relationship with Barbara is playful, but not easy to read, crackling with loss and desire. His throwaway dismissal of Barbara to a prostitute’s life, “Go with thy flesh to Turnbull shambles! [AN 5.2.speech1075]” is difficult to play as comedy, and has echoes of Prospero’s treatment of Caliban. I was very struck by one of his asides in Act Three:I have provided otherwise For both you in my chamber, and from thence We’ll at a window see the rest o’th’play [AN 3.1.speech667]50This is a novel way for Brome to explain away the absence of these three actors from the stage for the next twenty minutes; but the implied distance and lack of interest in the main action shows perfectly where Letoy’s focus really lies — with Diana. Letoy also repeats variations of one phrase more and more as the plot advances:You’re up, As I am true Letoy [AN 4.1.speech921]I’ll cross your fortune else, As I am true Letoy [AN 5.2.speech1033][…] that I then resolved By some quaint way (for I am still Letoy) To see and try her throughly; and so much To make her mine as I should find her worthy. And now thou art my daughter and mine heir, Provided still (for I am still Letoy) You honourably love her and defy The cuckold-making fiend, foul jealousy [AN 5.2.speech1049]As I am true Letoy, I have one toy left [AN 5.2.speech1071]51There is arrogance in his confession, but his description of the reasons for his actions is honest, and indicates some depth of feeling that has been locked away for years. Whether he will be able to adjust to his new role as a family man is as uncertain as Prospero’s redemption without magic powers on dry land.Truelock“Your honour does as freely Release me of my vow, then, in the secret I lock’d up in this breast these seventeen years Since she was three days old? [AN 5.2.speech1046]”Figure 10: Truelock reveals his secret, Act Five, The Antipodes,
directed by Kim Durban 2008.
Photograph by Bronwyn Pringle.
52Brome is fond of naming characters according to their natures. If Peregrine is the travelling bird, Letoy the master of games and Diana the goddess of chastity, then Truelock is exactly as he is named, one who is faithful and keeps secrets locked away. This character only has seventeen lines, but his action is the pivot-point of the sub-plot (given Letoy’s control over events, perhaps the sub-plot is not really “sub” at all? Truelock names Letoy as ‘good’, is described as his ‘constant friend’ and implies that he has been rewarded emotionally and financially for his collusion. But he gives away his ‘daughter’ and does not reveal his feelings. In studying the play I can justify his functional nature — but to the director staging the action, he is a real man who must be dealt with; someone the audience will continue to witness after the moment. His placement on the stage was fascinating and very problematic: I needed to consider the potential of stillness.53At first in the revelation by Truelock, the men are talking to each other, and Diana is just spoken about. Gradually, as the scene moves along and Letoy reveals his history and purpose, Truelock can be perceived in the same fashion. The silent woman has gained an ally or partner as powerless as she. What are they now to each other? What is the meaning of their seventeen years together? They are unable to move or respond to the news. In my interpretation, my 1950s setting became a useful translation device, inspiring my actor’s Truelock to arrive drunk, as if steeling himself in anticipation of his task, and then to drink quietly and in pain until the end of the play. Whilst The Antipodes is most gloriously a comedy (which I have no wish to undermine), the tone of Act 5 implies that Brome constructed a comedy surrounded by shadows, and he knew it. He seems uninterested in simple endings.Site Specific Staging54The Antipodes was not staged in a theatre on this occasion, but in a found space which would force the actor-audience relationship into proximity. My choice to stage the production in the Ballarat Mining Exchangen10863 was the expression of my interest in making a site-specific performance which might reflect favourably on the historical location of the story, and create echoes and relationships for a local audience unused to classical theatre conventions. There is no one definition for site-specific theatre. Site-specific performance seeks to eschew the values of theatrical illusion inherent in a theatre setting, and to embrace the aesthetic of a chosen location as an artistic ingredient in the composition, thus making the presentation a unique event, and specific to its location. In fact, the origins of medieval performance were founded on the travelling pageant wagon which took advantage of multiple locations, and the plush linear experience we know of as ‘theatre’ in our own time is relatively recent as a development. The term ‘site-specific’ was coined in the early 1980s by such companies as Brith Gofn10864 to describe their practice. Australian exponents include Neil Cameron and The Old Van, based locally in Ballan, Victoria.Figure 11: ‘Interval’ notice projected during The Antipodes performance,showing roof detail, The Ballarat Mining Exchange.
Photograph by Bronwyn Pringle.
55The Mining Exchange is not a theatre and has no scenic or spatial infrastructure for theatrical presentation. What it does have is a vast open space, imprinted by echoes of its past uses, including ghostly remnants of signage from the nineteenth century. Its visual charm emanates from the red bricks, natural light, roof, alcoves and stairs left intact despite many varied functions and renovations over the last century. The atmosphere invokes a former time. Site-specific performance allows for the space itself to ‘participate’ in the performance. I wished to take advantage of this location by inviting the audience on a physical journey through the space. Through this re-enactment of passage, I hoped that they would travel with Peregrine and enter his fantasy. Perambulatory performance requires the audience to move location and change perspective on the action, removing a pictorial perspective. I question whether it is necessary for everyone to see equally and maintain the same perspective on to the action; the crucial factor is a playing space that is wholly dynamic and energised.56The following description of the performance maps out my approach to the space, as produced with my designers. The first forty minutes of the action was staged in the entrance to the Mining Exchange, as a visit to Letoy’s 1950s world. This was conceived as a slightly baronial hall where the audience received sherry or lemonade upon arrival. The atmosphere pre-show was punctuated by 1950s swing music, and designed to be convivial. There were sculpture installations in the alcoves, with references to 50s music and art, furniture and lamps. Audience seats were scattered informally around and through the action. I chose this arrangement to privilege the concept of the open stage, which would have been used in Brome’s time, rather than end-on presentation with a fixed audience viewpoint, common in many contemporary theatres and in fact a habitual response to most audience arrangements since the development of proscenium arch theatres. I find it fascinating that both the DVD company and a guest photographer did everything in their power to deny the field-of-vision that I deliberately constructed, and framed the theatrical action as a series of ‘pictures’, ‘leaving out’ the view of the audience and the space. This says much about the visual perspective offered by contemporary imagery.57In the first sequence of the production we meet all the characters, and the major plot points are established. The Mining Exchange balcony was used as it would have been in the seventeenth century, as a place of wealth for over-looking the transaction below (although we were unable to seat audience members up there). The cure is plotted; Peregrine is drugged; a bell announces the arrival of a procession of sailors and the Doctors, escorting Peregrine on his ‘voyage’ in a sedan chair; the audience is invited to follow. They perambulate in semi-darkness past a vast backstage world where 200 costumes hang on racks and the actors from Letoy’s company are warming up, changing and waiting. The sounds of Australia are introduced in the semi-darkness through a layered soundscape which includes didgeridoo, whip birds and the sea, and this sound impression heralds our arrival in the Antipodes. The audience are then re-seated in a new semi-circular arrangement very close to the action. Again, I chose with designer John Bennett to create open staging, so that each audience member’s perspective was unique. For the last twenty minutes before the interval, Peregrine awakes to a world of sound and light. The world of the Antipodes is introduced through the 1789 costumes, Australian accents and a broader playing style. Indigenous animals, knockabout larrikins and silly stuff are paraded for him. Above is the floating furniture of the upside-down world, hanging in the sky above the action. Letoy’s group keeps the audience alert to the nature of ‘The Play’ by their commentary and by their constant breaking up or into the action. Staging the Letoy group proved very challenging, since they are an ‘audience’ that needs to be observed by the real audience. After failed experiments which placed them with the real audience, I used the alcoves of the Mining Exchange, which set them apart from the main action, yet onstage and completing the circle of the action and the audience. It was important to emphasise the public nature of some of the comments between Diana and Joyless, emphasising their mutual and multi-layered playacting.58After the interval, Brome’s play resumes in the semi-circular setting with an hour of comedy, in which scenes of antipodean life are presented to Peregrine and explained by his Doctors. Although repetitive, these scenes layer the different strata of Antipodean society by giving a social cross-section from top to bottom. There are many episodes of eaves-dropping and watching from the Mining Exchange alcoves. The re-enactments also precipitate the crisis in which Peregrine seizes Kingship and resolves to act as a social reformer. Letoy’s plan to goad Joyless succeeds. The Play ends with a marriage pageant.59Following a second interval, the audience returns to the baronial hall setting and Letoy’s 1950s world for the last forty minutes. They know the characters, but note that the tone of the play has darkened, which we indicated with lighting changes and wind sounds. Diana is tested. In a series of rapid reversals, major revelations of the relationship between Letoy and the Joyless family are offered, assimilated and “celebrated”, although the fast-moving plot leaves small room for response from either the audience or the characters involved. The Antipodes ends with a celebratory masque, performed in this setting by a fifties band in the jazz style. Letoy reveals his reality, Peregrine is healed, and all is restored. We vacate the hall.60My directorial interpretation of the pantomimic and commedia aspects of this text pushed me towards a style of scenic naivety that could encompass the repeated instructions for characters to kick one another. This is not a world where dignity is uppermost. In the introduction of Australian bush animals in the Prologue for the play-within-the play, and the marital pageant of Act 4, I was thinking about the patriotism of an emergent Australia such as we might witness at Federation celebrations, even though my scenes were set over one hundred years before that. I also wanted to reference the child-like enthusiasm of Peregrine.*“He kisses sweetly;
And that is more than e’er my husband did” [AN 4.1.speech891]Figure 12: Martha as Queen of the Antipodes, Act Four, The Antipodes,directed by Kim Durban 2008.
Photograph by Bronwyn Pringle.
61The play takes savage swipes at law and society and creates rapid re-enactments of the consequences of an unlawful society, especially in the character of Byplay, who takes liberties with power. Female energy is fully released in Act 4 with the old lady, the young maid and the Buff Woman showing the inverse of the male with gusto, as they swash and buckle their way through society. In pantomime, gender swaps frequently encapsulate a sense of class, pushing dames and principal boys up and down the status chain while commenting on the gender divide along the way. In the same manner, Brome investigates the ducking of a man-scold and the active pursuit of a Gentleman by a Young Woman. Peregrine’s wife Martha’s desire for a child leads her past sexual ignorance into active participation in the Antipodes. This is a sexy play but, unlike The City Wit, here Brome is not salacious. He creates an antipodean universe that will be strong enough in suggestion to heal the mad patient. It therefore requires actors to commit to a strong level of physical courage and display, to behave with lunacy in order to reference sanity.Reception of the Productions62The City Wit is a play that teases and flirts. Richard Brome is an exciting playwright to examine, given that he is not afraid to fill the stage with many characters, and wittily play them off against each other, using asides frequently to release the dramatic pressure. There is a pattern through the play of withheld confidences and endlessly delayed revelations, when characters flirt, toy and provoke before they will tell their news. The text is straightforward in its plot momentum despite some tortuous games played by the characters, and matters escalate humorously to a hilarious conclusion. My upside down version of The City Wit delighted its Australian audience. They did not predict the true nature of Tryman, but many of them explained that they were curious about where Jeremy had disappeared to. My favourite thing about the DVD of the opening performance is that there is laughter from the audience right the way through. For me, the experiments with gender representation paid off, allowing us an X-Ray into the posing and vulnerability of both sexes. But this play is like a Christmas pudding with many tasty ingredients. People were quite shocked by the amount of bawdry and double entendres, and found Crack strange and perplexing, much as Crasy does.63Feedback from the actors during The Antipodes season was incisive. They reported that in playing the play, they felt that it went ‘in waves’, circulating out from the ‘bounce’ that comes from making entrances and exits, and that it required immense energy. Analogies for the performance included “a layer cake” and “an onion”, “a roller coaster depending on the audience reaction”. One remarked that “the audience is the surfboard we ride on - if we lose them, we all go”. Another stated that the “linking and joining bits keep the show alive” and “you notice when it’s derailed”. “It’s a bastard to stay in character — the costumes help.” In playing the text, an actress reported that she found it helpful to organise her energy in sections, then rest between these. The company members experienced the play as quick, despite its being nearly three hours long, and stated that the three actual locations gave each of the acts a specific mood and temperature. Sometimes the volume of the audience’s laughter meant that they could not listen fully to each other. One actor remarked: “I don’t feel the weight of the angst of the characters”. Most alien was the style of asides, requiring the actor to be in what one described as a “suspended state”. Each performance, they felt that they lost the audience in Act 5 for a while, as if they were asking “What is this play, where is it coming from?” But then the audience “returned” to them,, though they could never resolve or quite understand the shift of tone in Act 5, the introduction of a knife or the lack of affection between some of the characters, such as Letoy and Diana.“Enough, enough. He will be quiet now [AN 4.1.speech748].”Figure 13: The women duck the Man-Scold, Act Four, The Antipodes,directed by Kim Durban 2008. Photography by Bronwyn Pringle.
64Audience members were very expectant before The Antipodes. I was asked a few times for a plot synopsis. Responses to the physical comedy were positive and immediate. Some people struggled with the accents, and felt that the actors went too fast verbally to be understood. When they were escorted through the “backstage” area, many remarked out loud that it was amazing. “Seeing the dressing area made me think about old theatres in the 1950s.“ Some thought the 50s setting made the play understandable and accessible. Commentary afterwards was that the play was “a great play, very funny”; “it didn’t feel like three hours”. Spectators were confused about why they had never heard of such a good play.65There was consistency of laughter through the season at all the good lines, especially the sexual jokes. Some people felt that I could have edited the middle section of the text more strongly, since the audience got the point quite quickly, and the content seemed more dated, so they were less engaged by the Antipodean reversals. One person told the cast that the play reminded her of the works of film director David Lynch, but she couldn’t explain why. Members of the cast of the 2007 production of The City Wit attended. They reflected: “It is definitely Brome, you see it in the little verbal twists, and the characters — especially in the inverted world”.A Final Reflection66All art is composed from subjective knowledge. There is no simple way to sum up the experience of mounting these plays. I have been preoccupied with the search to understand if I am involved in restoring, like an antique relic; resurrecting, as in creating life again; or re-animating this historical work as a walking ghost of its previous reality. However, my directorial work is not driven by wanting to be in the past, but rather to allow the past to speak to me. Richard Brome’s plays The City Wit and The Antipodes are strong comedies containing intricate details about another place and time, yet the characters are appealing and understandable, allowing a public performance in contemporary times to rock an audience with laughter. I have learnt that such a play resists the most modern of rehearsal methods, being a narrative written largely without psychology. Modern performers have been trained to dwell on the inner life; yet these texts are best performed without this influence, through a connection with the physical and the animal as the source of acting ideas.67Laid over this is the considerable demand of the Caroline text, where the universe of the drama is moulded. Actors’ reflections on the text when in interview focussed on worrying about how an average audience would understand, and how to keep their choices clear: they knew they had to understand for us to understand. An effective rehearsal methodology for a director’s work on a neglected classic needs to be driven by passion and delight, and by continual experimentation. To work in a state of constant unknowing, underpinned by sound theatrical research, opens the floodgates for a collection of ideas about what can make such a performance achieve a convincing and engaging dynamic. The play is new and it is old.68 As a director who trains actors, I remain anxious at the way language and history are not taught to emerging actors prior to theatre training, so that the training environment is required to cover hundreds of years of cultural history in order to illuminate a single text. It is salutary to notice that many of the younger actors in the audience told us they could only follow the major points of the play because we used such outrageous characterisations and costumes in performance and provided a visual feast. It was when we reprised our performance of The City Wit at Royal Holloway June 2007, without costume, that we found an audience who laughed at the words.n10865 Does this mean that such plays are irrelevant to a contemporary generation? On the contrary, I believe Brome’s street-wise comedy has much to teach us, and it can still be very funny. Overall, I am thrilled that this example of Caroline theatre has been opened up to me, that it has exercised and educated a new generation of actors, and that it has delighted an audience in the real Antipodes.Dear Ric,The Antipodes was a great success, despite the wrangling you had to go through over the rights with Salisbury Court. Are the company still talking to you? Box office receipts are on the way. Here is some direct feedback from the audience:• “Why don’t we know it? Why did the play get lost, it’s fun?”
• “Huge, sprawling, wonderful.”
• “Going on a journey in the building makes you go there in the audience; you have to go on the journey too.”
• “The soundscape plays games with your mind, and these are good games which add a level of richness.”
• “The musical pastiche made me remember my own history.”
• “I couldn’t understand everything but I got caught up.”
• “Each performing space required me to re-tune my ear.”
Please let me know if you have anything you could offer for an Arts Academy commission in 2010. I remember you talking about a play on beggars in the countryside. It might be fun.Yours respectfully,Kim
n10853 All other roles were played gender-correct. Brainsex by Anne Moir and David Jessel
n10854 You just like me cos I’m good in bed.
n10855 I was determined to stop the actors putting on the plummy ‘Shakespeare’ voice we had been brought up with. I suggested we rehearse the play with mock-Italian accents- a parody of the Australian/Italian ‘greengrocer’ voice…Audiences were delighted with the result, but one or two critics had to carp. They assumed that I was out to ‘send up’ or trivialise Shakespeare.
n10856 This demands that the actor work solo without interaction, or intervention, on one aspect of character, for ten minutes in silence
n10857 “rich and strange”, which could only be Australia.
n10858 “New Chum”
n10859 …examples…suggest that a code of conventional gestures that were readily associated by the audience with specific emotional states was also available to the actors…..Exactly what (if indeed anything specific) the playwright had in mind, or the actors actually did, is irretrievable.
n10860 “its characters seem to wear their subconscious sexual urges almost on their sleeves”.
n10861 “preposterous but delightful”.
n10862 [T]he audience may find that the later revelation that he was only pretending, since he knew or half-knew Diana was really his own daughter, is not perhaps as comforting as comic decorum demands.
n10863 Ballarat Mining Exchange
n10864 Brith Gof
n10865 It was when we reprised our performance of The City Wit at Royal Holloway June 2007, without costume, that we found an audience who laughed at the words.
Richard Brome and the Caroline Theatre, to which Kim Durban’s company were invited to bring their production. That it was a highly responsive audience is not surprising, as it comprised a considerable number of academic specialists in renaissance theatre.