THEATRE-GOING WHEN YOUNG - PART 2 of 8

     6.     The Rivals

While not so brilliant, perhaps, as The School for Scandal, Sheridan’s other comic masterpiece, The Rivals was certainly well-enough respected for another revival – this time under the joint sponsorship of Williamsons and The Australian Elizabethan Theatre Trust; a season at the Comedy Theatre from 25 June 1956.  Respect for the play goes back a long way.  It was Sheridan’s first opus, a “comedy of manners”, premiering in London in 1775 when the playwright was aged 24.  We have from it the delightful Mrs. Malaprop and the origin of the malapropism, the inadvertent use of a similar-sounding word for the one intended:  the suppository of all wisdom, a member of Alcoholics Unanimous, upset the appletart.  And as Mrs. Malaprop herself suggested: illiterate him quite from your memory.  

Richard Brinsley Sheridan lived from1751 to 1816.  Born in Dublin, not only was he a successful playwright but he was also a successful politician – a member of the British House of Commons for 32 years.  He was long-time owner of the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane.

Although I have made no note of the performers we can be sure it was an all-star cast of the time.  I have, however, noted the programme’s advertisement for the Victorian Railways, picturing two blazered sportsman….”We go by train…..because  it’s so much cheaper for a team – Melbourne to Sydney and back, first class with sleepers, for pds 10/10/4 [$21.03]”.  One player is holding a cigarette; the other has a pipe in his mouth.

7         7.    Salome

As a kid I was a regular movie-goer, living a short distance and a penny tram ride from the city.   I knew well all the then city picture theatres: in Bourke Street the Regent, the Plaza, the St. James, the Esquire, the Lyceum, and the Liberty; in Collins Street the Metro, the Athenaeum and the Australia; in Flinders Street the State and the Majestic; in Russell Street the Kings and the Savoy; in Swanston Street the Capitol; in Little Collins Street the Grosvenor.  They were all of significant size, nearly all with balcony seating.  Some had at one time been “live” theatres.  There were no multi-screens or intimate spaces.  The Regent and the State were huge – purpose-built movie palaces, presented in the “Hollywood modern” style, grand or kitch depending on your aesthetic.  The Regent opened in March 1929, with 3250 seats.  It burned down in 1945, but was restored with its full pre-1945 bling, and is still functioning today, although now with a mere 2162 seats.  The State, of similar vintage, was a little larger, with 3371 seats – subsequently bastardised by being split into two theatres, upper the Forum and lower the Rapallo, although much of the décor remains. 

All of this is by way of lead-up to the Palais Theatre, located not in the Melbourne city centre, but on the foreshore of Port Phillip at St. Kilda, some six kilometres from the city.  The Palais was built as a movie venue in 1927, and opened a bit over a year before the Regent.  It had and has just under 3000 seats, and is the largest in Australia.  The theatre’s imposing size is enhanced by its free-standing location on an island site, and by its art deco façade.  Through far-sighted planning the Palais was built with a wide proscenium stage, an orchestral pit, and full backstage facilities; in other words, from the outset it was capable of presenting theatre as well as movies.

And so, in April of 1960, the Palais welcomed Joan Hammond back to Australia for a two-production opera season of Madame Butterfly and Salome; singing the name roles, obviously.  I say obviously a little with tongue in cheek: Hammond was 48 at the time, whereas Butterfly as written was 15, and the original Biblical Salome was “a girl”. Nobody would expect Salome to be sung by a teenager: the role requires a voice honed by years of operatic training and experience.  It is simply a given that the soprano must be a mature person.  Disbelief has to be suspended.  Not so readily, however, when it comes to the Dance of the Seven Veils, the sexually charged highpoint where Salome seduces Herod into rewarding her with John the Baptist’s head on a plate.  Some sopranos have used a double for the nine minutes of dancing and unveiling but, as Hammond points out in her autobiography, A Voice, A Life, this is far from ideal – because the changeover, however well executed, invariably jars:  aside from the physical dissimilarities there is no space in the music for the dancer to leave the stage unobtrusively.  Hammond, a woman quite ample, bravely did her own thing.

Hammond, was more than the expatriate returning - she was an exceptional soprano.  She trained in Sydney and in Vienna, the latter courtesy of a scholarship provided by the wife of the New South Wales Governor (partly in recognition of Hammond’s success as the State junior champion golfer).   Known best in Australia for her operatic recordings, she had an extensive European career, and a wide repertoire.  She sang at the Royal Opera House, at the Bolshoi, at La Scala and at the Vienna Opera House.   And here she was at the Palais!

 

What had originated as a few lines in the Bible had expanded into the 1892 play by Oscar Wilde, then the 1905 Richard Strauss opera.   The opera had never before been staged in Australia, and the Elizabethan Theatre Trust Opera Company toured it through the State capitals from March through July 1960.  At the Palais in April, the Victorian Symphony Orchestra was in the pit.   It was quite an occasion, and I was grateful that a university friend had been alert enough to make the arrangements.

In addition to the operatic credits the programme invited us to The Graham, Melbourne’s newest hotel, at 67 Swanston Street, where “a meal becomes an occasion”; and tantalisingly asked us why women everywhere prefer Prestige hosiery and lingerie.  The answer was supposed to be self-evident.  And a Pelaco “Fractional Fitt” shirt was extolled as “the natural choice for Office or Opera”, accompanied by the then Pelaco slogan: “It is indeed a lovely shirt sir!”

p.s.  On reflection, I may have let my disquiet at Joan Hammond’s appearance as a dancer overshadow my respect for her as a singer and operatic artist.  I have been a lifelong admirer, and the playing of Hammond discs – which happens around here more than occasionally – reinforces my view that her voice was one for the ages.  Not only was Hammond comfortable in the standard Puccini and Verdi soprano repertoire, but in Salome she tackled a role as demanding as Wagner’s Brunhilde and Isolde, a role requiring artistry, stamina and volume: the power of a dramatic soprano wrapped in the sound of a young woman.  Given these accomplishments, the dance sequence is not all that important.

        8.     Stars of the Paris Opera Ballet Company

In August 1967 I was a fledgling accountant and taxation adviser, and one of my more interesting assignments was to prepare the Australian income tax returns for the cast members of the visiting Paris Opera Ballet Company.  The then law required all persons about to leave Australia to obtain a certificate from the taxation authorities to the effect that they had settled any taxes owing and that there was no objection to their departure.  It was an offence for any “charterer” to transport a person from Australia without such certificate.  A certificate would not be issued if the authorities believed that income tax was owing and would not be paid.  With 2015 hindsight, imagine the inconvenience of such a system:  business executives on flying visits, lining up at the Taxation Department, then the dash to the airport.

There were, in fact, tax exemptions for many visiting business people and other short-term visitors, but not for entertainers and sportspeople.  So Taxation  Department officials circled the Australian Open, test cricket matches, and theatreland like sharks.  I do exaggerate.  In reality the onus was placed on theatre management and entrepreneurs to ensure that theatrical visitors and artists physically lodged taxation returns before leaving the country, and to guarantee payment of the tax that had to be deducted under the employer tax withholding system.  Such was the case with the dancers of the Paris Opera Ballet Company and entrepreneur James Laurie.

Laurie was an expatriate Australian, and had previously imported other touring companies.  I fancy that his passion exceeded his common sense, and that – to date - his had not been a financially successful career. But he believed that the Paris Opera Ballet Company tour was to change all that.  Through some contact that Laurie had with my office, we were engaged to handle the tax affairs of the dancers (but not Laurie, nor his management company), and I was the pointy end of the contact.  I ascertained the particulars for each dancer, including their remuneration for the season, calculated the tax to be withheld by the entrepreneur, and prepared the individual tax returns. 

The concept of a ballet company being part of an opera theatre has no echo in Australia, but the ballet company attached to the Paris Opera has a long history of direct involvement with opera.  Dating from its foundation by Louis XIV in 1661, after many incarnations the ballet company in 1875 physically moved in with the opera…….……..at the new Palais Garnier (the Paris Opera), where they cohabit to this day. 

And here I was, at the Palais Theatre again, oblivious to all this history, roving through the dressing rooms before the performance gathering signatures on tax returns.  It was a somewhat frenetic business, me with no French and the dancers mostly without English, and them having little interest in what I was about.  I didn’t have time to be star-struck; and my one impression was how small the dancers were.  The ballet programme comprised a portfolio of short works, not one of which has remained in my memory.

        9.    A Midsummer Night’s Dream

This was the second play in the 4-play 1959 Shakespearean season mounted by the J. C. Williamson Shakespeare Company at the Comedy Theatre.   I didn’t see the third and fourth plays, The Merchant of Venice and Measure for Measure.  As to the first play: see my earlier blog Theatre-Going When Young – Part 1, programme 4, for my thoughts on King Lear.   As with Lear, A Midsummer Night’s Dream had the local cast headed by Peter O’Shaughnessy and John Alden.  The leads alternated as Bottom.   That 26-member all-star cast included a number of actors whose names were well-known to me.  At the time it would have been impossible to make a living from theatre engagements alone; actors invariably worked as radio actors, with the occasional stage appearance.  Additionally, there had been the arrival of television broadcasting a couple of years earlier, and something of a commitment to locally-produced drama.  So – I’m guessing - 1959 may have been a financially rewarding time in the acting profession in Australia, relatively speaking anyway.  The company included John Unicomb, Terry McDermott, John Frawley, Jessica Noad and Leonard Bullen.

       10.     1958 Inter-Varsity Drama Festival

I think it’s quite extraordinary that if you Google “Inter-Varsity Drama Festival” (with no reference to the year), the second entry that appears on the screen is the link to the 1958 Festival that I attended!  Perhaps such festivals are uncommon in other parts of the globe, perhaps 1958 in Melbourne was a stand-out year, or perhaps the swansong.  No further research is warranted………...by me, at least – I prefer to remain mystified. 

The University of Melbourne’s contribution, on 14 August 1958, was Theresa by Gordon Kirby “remotely based upon” Zola’s Therese Raquin.  The cast included Monica Maughan , Richard Pratt and David Niven.  Remember that in 1958 there was one university only in Melbourne (and Victoria), indeed there were few around the nation.  The other participants in the 13-days-long Festival were:

  University of Adelaide  Ladies in Retirement  by Edward Percy and Reginald Denham

  Canberra University College  I am a Camera  by John van Druten

  NSW University of Technology  Kate Kennedy  by Gordon Bottomly

  University of Queensland  September Tide  by Daphne du Maurier

  University of Sydney  The Infernal Machine  by Jean Cocteau

  University of Tasmania  They Walk Alone  by Max Catto

  University of Western Australia  Yes, My Darling Daughter  by Mark Reed

Most memorable (meaning I have some faint recollection) were I am a Camera, based on Christopher Isherwood’s Goodbye to Berlin, and The Infernal Machine, a re-telling of the Oedipus legend. 

Doubtless, a good time was had by all……..with the possible exception of Oedipus.

          11.   Phillip Street Revue

The Phillip Street Theatre was influential in the Sydney theatre scene from 1954 to 1971.  Founded by William Orr (director and theatre administrator ex London) it occupied the Workers’ Education Hall, and the sensibilities of Sydney, with a series of reviews and other programmes.  The best-known Australian performers of that era were invariably Phillip Street alumni.  The review that was toured at the Comedy Theatre, Melbourne, from 21 May, 1960 starred Jill Perryman and Max Oldaker.  The programme comprised 25 skits.

Perryman, still with us at 82, had a prominent career in Australian musical theatre, including leading roles in Funny Girl, A Little Night Music, Annie and No, No, Nanette.

Oldaker, of an earlier generation, ranged further afield.  His career was notable, although one commentator suggests that he was a diffident soul whose report card would likely have read “could do even better”.  He sought experience in England in 1930, where “good looks, elegance, natural charm, and a fine lyric voice” secured work from vaudeville to opera.  He later studied at the Royal Academy of Music, and graduated with the prize for the best pianist-singer.  An operatic career was predicted by John Barbirolli, but Oldaker gravitated instead to musicals.  Back in Australia just after the outbreak of the Second World War, he became a fixture of musical theatre for the next 20 years, including a period with the Phillip Street Theatre.  He died in 1972, aged 65.

12.   Double Image

Over the entrance to Hell, according to Dante’s Inferno (as rendered in English), are the words “Abandon hope all ye who enter here”; and, likewise, over the doors to theatres we might expect to see the words “Suspend disbelief all ye who enter here”.  Theatre is theatre, not real life, and it is great theatre indeed if it conjures up believability.   Double Image was not great theatre, its plot having set a credibility hurdle that brought it undone at the first jump.  The plot, the point of the plot, is revealed by the title, Double Image: a man inveigles himself into the shoes and the life of his twin brother……..including the arms of his sister-in-law.  Go figure that she didn’t figure; and suspend disbelief, or leave at interval.

The playwrights were Roger Macdougall and Ted Allan, the former a successful writer with a number of film credits, the latter with no discernable trace 50 years on.  British actor Emrys Jones headlined for Williamsons at the Comedy Theatre.   Jones was not an established star, despite the programme bio recounting a number of stage and film appearances.  References to Jones’ subsequent roles are hard to find.  He died a decade later, aged 56.

      13.    La Boheme

There are symphony orchestral musicians who never get to play operas, and there are opera theatre musicians who never get to play the (non-operatic) orchestral repertoire.  The members of Australia’s State-based symphony orchestras are in the former category.  As to the latter:  prior to 1967, operatic performances in Australia were typically underpinned by “pick-up” orchestras, and those musicians were likely to have had diverse careers.  The Opera Australia Orchestra was inaugurated in 1967 by the Australian Elizabethan Theatre Trust (Opera Australia’s foundation identity), and then devolved into Sydney- and Melbourne-based orchestras in 1969.  Their players can expect careers effectively subjugated to the demands of the human voice.

Fortunate indeed was the 1957 Grand Opera Season, the Melbourne productions of which were accompanied by the Victorian Symphony Orchestra (later re-named the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra).   Fortunate, too, were the orchestral players of the VSO who thereby had their day in the operatic sun. The Season was staged by the Elizabethan Theatre Trust in conjunction with the Garnet Carroll organisation.

 I was at the Princess’s Theatre on the night of 22 October, 1957 to hear Elsie Morison as Mimi, Max Worthley as Rodolfo, Joy Mammon as Musetta, John Shaw as Marcel, Alan Light as Schaunard and Neil Warren-Smith as Colline.   

All the principals were Australian and, with the exception of Elsie Morrison, all Australian-based.  Morison had studied at the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music from 1943 to 1945, then at the Royal College of Music.  She was with the Sadler’s Wells Opera from 1948 to 1954; and her Covent Garden debut in 1953 was as Mimi.  She retired from the stage in 1963 after marrying Czech conductor Rafael Kubelik.  Prior to that she returned to perform in Australia the once only, for the 1957 Grand Opera Season.    

Commenting on the production of La Boheme and the other operas comprising the Season, John Cargher asserts:  “The Trust may well have gained from the previous training and experience of young singers……….but its producers were still dealing with raw material which had instinctive artistry rather than any degree of professionalism.  They carried off their performances with tremendous panache, but also with enough improvisation to give a professional producer heart attacks……..Any success the company had in 1957……… came from the sheer joie de vivre of the enlarged company…..the works….gave opportunities for belting out their best notes for the most effect and there was ample space for high jinks…….Boheme …….was largely carried by Elsie Morison and her playful colleagues…….a suitably undisciplined lot of Bohemians among whom Morison’s Mimi shone in delightful contrast.  Her death produced rather more than the usual flood of tears.”  I remember.

Part 3 is somewhere in the pipeline.

Gary Andrews