Eleven
Year Itch - The Howard Years, by Shortis & Simpson, opening on May 3 at The
Street Theatre.
Three months into
his Canberra Times career, this very writer, reviewing John Shortis and Moya
Simpson in June 1996, wrote “But maybe I expect too much of Queanbeyan: terror on
Monaro Street is not something we can seriously contemplate” in response to the
promise to “terrorise the audience” with satire.
Shortis &
Curlies, with the late Andrew Bissett, at The School of Arts Cafe, presented by
the now legendary Bill Stephens, was the first of the Shortis and Simpson
series of satirical shows which have played (or maybe plagued, according to
your political position) the Canberra region every year since. But not only did
their career run parallel with mine. The
much more illustrious comparison is with the grasp on government of PM John
Howard, who has made the fear of terror real, even in Queanbeyan.
“Let the itch begin
/ Let us start from scratch” introduces Eleven Year Itch - The Howard Years,
opening on May 3 at The Street Theatre.
The itch to write
and sing satirical cabaret began in Sydney, when Stephens heard one of Shortis’
songs performed by Margaret Roadknight.
Although Simpson was a also successful singer, it was not until 1995, when
their children left home and gave them freedom, that the couple toured together
in country regions. When their caravan
reached Bungendore they stopped, and took up the School of Arts offer.
Eleven years on,
looking back on both the political changes and their own creative development,
audiences may be surprised to find themselves in a new theatrical world. The
Street Theatre’s artistic director, Caroline Stacey, is working with Shortis
and Simpson, building on and extending their talents. Eleven Year Itch is risky and demanding work,
taking John Shortis out of the writer’s garrett, off the piano stool, and
behind instruments we never knew he could play
ukulele, accordion, pedal organ, trombone among some others previously
unknown to anyone.
Stacey’s
expectations for the full depth of character which she brings fom directing
plays and opera, is a new challenge for Moya Simpson. During rehearsal, as I watched, Simpson grew
in one of her roles, as John Howard dreaming of waterfront reform (remember the
black dogs in the night). Stacey also
has expertise in European political cabaret, making each of her rehearsal notes
hone both Simpson’s quality of voice and belief in her character’s desires. Just the first line “I’m down here, on the
waterfront, in the full moonlight” suddenly became tragic (because we know the
implications of his instructions to Peter Reith), romantic (in an irky sort of
way), and horribly funny against Shortis’ French-style accordion playing.
The ACT Creative
Arts Fellowship which Shortis received a year or so ago led him to the same
conclusion as Stacey. When it comes to
New York cabaret or European cabaret, though he likes both, it’s the European
tradition which underpins political satire.
After a reading of some new work last year, Eleven Year Itch is
Shortis’s first full production which has grown out of the Fellowship study
which took him back to Paris in 1880, through the Berlin cabaret which made
Bertolt Brecht famous. This show also
has ACT backing through a one-off project grant, which has enabled Shortis and
Simpson to work with Stacey, produce good publicity material, and set up the
studio at The Street in style.
The floorspace where
the audience sits, quaffing as required, is decorated in the ornate way which, in
the European tradition, makes the audience feel glamorous. But don’t imagine the action will remain
neatly confined to a tiny stage in the corner - as you may have seen in the
restaurant scene in the French film The Singer, where Alain Moreau (Gerard Depardieu)is
ignored by the snooty clientele. Be prepared, if you please for the karaoke.
Already bookings are
coming on apace, so some people may have discovered that their tables are not
numbered. They are named. After all, naming names is often what politics
is about. You will soon be singing along
with I Lunched With a Man Who Lunched With a Man Who Lunched at the Burke and
Grill.
Mention of Labor
allows us to make a note that, though project money from the ACT Government
supports Eleven Year Itch, the satirical target is not just the incumbent
Commonwealth Government. Shortis has
written more than humorous songs linked in a revue format. Using some of his own songs from previous
years, many new ones and a powerful lament for David Hicks written by Peter J
Casey, for the first time Shortis’s script is more like a play, with sections
delimited by the election years since 1996, and leading to a mystery
ending. What will happen in 2007?
Of course the
Coalition comes in for the stick it deserves, but the failure of Labor gets its
just deserts too. Latham in the Aisles
will be one song you won’t want to miss, whatever your personal
preference. Shortis makes no bones about
how he sees satire. A good politician is
an oxymoron, he says. He looks for “things
that are worth being scathing about”. No
politician is safe because dishonesty, manipulation of other people, using
politics for one’s personal advancement, and aiming only at winning rather than
doing honourable things are all worth being scathing about.
Being satirical is
about being even-handed, which some people see as being wishy-washy, but being
scathing leaves its mark on both hands, right and left. It’s theatrically and politically risky
(though not as much in Canberra 2007 as, say, in Berlin 1933), but, say
Shortis, Simpson and Stacey, the risk must be taken. You’ve got to do it, they say, in theatre,
just as you have to in politics.
Otherwise nothing is achieved.
This leads our
discussion to the awful realisation that, indeed, Prime Minister Howard has
done exactly that - achieved. All of a
sudden there are dark stories on all sides.
We see Australian culture as an Othello.
In destroying Othello, Iago achieves everything he desires, through
manipulating people’s fears, setting up fictional lines of demarcation, and
creating immense but unjustified jealousies.
But Othello’s power was Iago’s original support. By succeeding in
cutting down Othello, Iago only destroys himself. Is this the real story of the last eleven
years? Is aggrandisement the itch at
which politicians must scratch away, until our culture is undermined, to the
detriment of us all?
This is the new
Shortis and Simpson. You will find an
edge to their work, even in songs you’ve heard before. Stacey’s view is that a culture only comes to
maturity when an audience appreciates a satire even of itself. In the humour of political satire, dark
though it may be when governments make life and death decisions, or light as we
delve into the Prince of Dorkness himself, we find strength as a culture.
At the same time, as
Shortis, Simpson and Stacey explore new ways to stretch their and our
imaginations, they pull together the experience of theatre and the strands of
history, at least of the last eleven years - the Howard Years.
Eleven Year Itch -
The Howard Years
Shortis and Simpson
at The Street Theatre
Directed by Caroline
Stacey.
May 3 May 19, 8.30pm
Matinee May 19,
2.30pm
Tickets: $30 full;
$26 concession and groups.
Previews: May 1 and
2 $20
Bookings: 6247
1223
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