2025: How to Plot a Hit in Two Days by Melanie Tait

 

 

https://www.ensemble.com.au/shows/how-to-plot-a-hit-in-two-days/

How to Plot a Hit in Two Days by Melanie Tait.  Ensemble Theatre, Sydney, August 29 – October 11, 2025.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
September 13

Playwright: Melanie Tait
Director: Lee Lewis; Assistant Director: Tiffany Wong
    
Set & Costume Design: Simone Romaniuk
Lighting Design: Brockman; Composer & Sound Design: Paul Charlier
Stage Manager: Jen Jackson; Assistant Stage Manager: Sherydan Simson
Costume Supervisor: Renata Beslik

This production is made possible by the Commissioners’ Circle and The Tracey Trinder Playwright's Award.

Cast
 Sharon – Amy Ingram
 Dell – Genevieve Lemon
 Bert – Seán O'Shea
 Judy – Georgie Parker
 Sally – Julia Robertson



Turning the death of Molly into a heart-warming comedy was a stroke of genius on Melanie Tait’s part.

For anyone else as ignorant as me, who never watched A Country Practice, the crucial question is, Did Molly Really Die?

As serendipity would have it, my wife and I missed our usual appointment to watch ABC TV’s 7.30 just last Monday.  You can watch it now, at https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-09-08/behind-molly%E2%80%99s-heartbreaking-death-on-a-country/105750504 celebrating 40 years since Molly’s “heartbreaking death” as “a new play goes inside the writer’s room to reveal how that heartbreaking storyline was created. Richard Mockler brings us this story” including interviewing the actors, Anne Tenney (Molly) and Shane Withington (her husband, Brendan).

So the answer to that crucial question is complicated.  Molly was a fictional character, so “iconic” that she still hasn’t died in our cultural memory.  But that’s only because she really did die, in that fiction.

And now, Melanie Tait – who is obviously very real – has created her fictional story of the group of writers, as she imagined them, who created the fictional Molly for the very real Anne Tenney to act, 40 years ago.  In deciding, over many fraught sessions, about how to “kill” Molly, Tait’s writers find themselves imagining why Anne has decided to leave the show, and so create for them this awful task of writing Molly out.  Was it just for a better paid acting job somewhere else?

The real Anne doesn’t say in the 7.30 interview, but does say “They coined my character mad Molly, for some reason or other. She was very involved in local issues and very environmentally aware.” Hmm!

 

Writers Team: 
Julia Robertson whose other job is ICU Nurse, Sally, 
who has seen someone die from leukemia.
Georgie Parker as Judy, the final writer who "kills" Molly.

Writers Team:
Genevieve Lemon as Dell Isn't there another character we could make a theatre critic
and get Judy to kill? (The Mirror's Woeful Theatre Section revolting little man)
Seán O'Shea as Bert, whose wife takes off with a camera grip on a film shoot in Darwin.
Georgie Parker as Judy

Amy Ingram as Sharon, in full motorcycle gear.
Full rock star/former jail inmate vibes.

In the end the important thing, as you watch Melanie Tait’s imagination made real before your very eyes by the terrific top-quality actors, so precisely directed in every detail of lifted eyebrow, rolled eyes, widened eyes and clarity of ironic speech, the real answer is that at many points you will die laughing.

But in the end you will be seriously impressed by Tait’s skill making humour telling.  A Country Practice  may have been a commercial television soapie, but the way that team of writers finally came up with the way Molly dies – maintaining for the audience not just a conventional sentimentality about her unfortunate passing, but a positive view of her life as a mother and wife – turned A Country Practice into a positive social force.

The play, How to Plot a Hit in Two Days, is wonderfully enjoyable to watch, especially because the group of writers, each quite different personalities, work so well together, understanding each others’ feelings about problematic situations in their own lives which arise from working out the effects on people who will watch Molly’s death – from understanding medical issues (she dies from leukemia), social and family issues, and environmental issues (after all, it’s a country practice).

The theatre company is not called Ensemble for nothing.  This is an ensemble production of the best kind – light-hearted in performance and strong-hearted in effect.

As the playscript says (it includes the program, for $10: Currency Press), This isn’t your average conference room.  It’s where writers are expected to come up with ideas, so it’s comfortable, lived in and welcoming.  Indeed it is.

Certainly not to be missed.
 

©Frank McKone, Canberra

2025: Peter/Wendy by Jeremy Bloom

 

 

Peter/Wendy by Jeremy Bloom. Ribix Productions and Lexi Sekuless Productions at Mill Theatre, Dairy Road, Canberra, September 3-27, 2025.

Presented as part of the Mill Theatre Co-Production Series, a program which provides an avenue for creatives to present their own work in the Mill Theatre space.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
September 10

Cast

In alphabetical order:
Wendy U/S, Swing: Aleksis Andreitchenko (she/her)
Wendy: Veronica Baroulina (she/her)
Tinker Bell: Chipz (they/them)
Lost Boy: Phoebe Fielden (she/her)
Tiger Lily:    Sarah Hartley (she/her)
Peter Pan: Joshua James (he/him)
Mr Darling/Smee: Mark Lee (he/him)
Mrs Darling/Hook: Heidi Silberman (she/her)


Creative Team

Writer: Jeremy Bloom; Director: Rachel Pengilly (she/her)
Movement Director: Hannah Pengilly (she/her)
Composer & Sound Designer: Shannon Parnell (she/her)
Set & Costume Designer: Helen Wojtas (she/her)
Lighting Designer: Jacob Aquilina (he/him)
Stage Manage: Hannah Pengilly (she/her)
Assistant Stage Managers: Sophie Hope-White (she/her) & Ciara Ford (she/her)
Intimacy Coordinator: Chipz (they/them)
Marketing and Publicity: Liv Blucher (she/her)
Vocal Coach: Lexi Sekuless (she/her)
Singing Tutor: Petronella van Tienen (she/her)
Consulting Artist: Julia Grace (she/her)

Co-Producers: Ribix Productions and Lexi Sekuless Productions by permission of ORiGiN™ Theatrical on behalf of Playscripts, Inc and Broadway Licensing Global

Principal Sponsor: Willard Public Affairs; Media Partner: Darkhorse Creative

Further credits found here: https://www.ribixproductions.com.au/peter-wendy/


You can read the original playscript of Peter Pan; or, The Boy Who Would Not Grow Up at https://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0300081h.html 
Or you can also read the book called Peter and Wendy at https://www.google.com.au/books/edition/Peter_and_Wendy/yhbTEAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PA2&printsec=frontcover

Peter/Wendy seems to have drawn on both.  J M Barrie writes as if he, in reality, is living in a fantasy land.  His play has hugely long stage directions which seem impossible to fulfill, while his novel describes the characters in excruciating psychological details that are hard to accept.

At this point in my reading, Barrie seems either an early 20th Century absurdist or an unpleasant social satirist.

At https://www.playscripts.com/play/2714 you will find Jeremy Bloom’s script, “adapted from the works of J M Barrie”, which is described as a “lyrical, atmospheric interpretation of Peter Pan, [in which] Jeremy Bloom strips the familiar story down to its emotional essence. Peter lures Wendy away from her nursery to the magical world of Neverland, where she joins his adventures with Tinker Bell, Tiger Lily, and the menacing Captain Hook. A low-tech, inventive adaptation that pays homage to the darker themes of J. M. Barrie's original”.

And I am pleased to report that Rachel Pengilly and her team of designers and actors have succeeded in creating that ‘emotional essence’ in the relationship between Wendy and the faeries, and reveal the need in an imaginative young daughter to psychologically escape the ‘standard’ parents’ assumptions about parenting.  They are not the darlings that their name suggests.

This justifies a positive answer to the question we might ask: why present stage material written in that ‘different country’ more than 100 years ago?  It’s because that need for escape – to grow up – is as relevant today as then; and perhaps more so in a world where a modern Peter will be on Wendy’s social media feed, while her parents have no idea of the Captain Hooks and Tinker Bells she come across.  It’s a worry – and we feel it as Peter/Wendy ends as the dawn begins.

On the practical theatre side, the set design, the detailed complex choreography in using all the symbolic items of Peter’s world of adventures, and the lighting and sound, created the fantasy world very successfully, showing a high degree of originality which, for me, solved those stage direction difficulties I saw in Barrie’s script.

Especially important, and highly successful was the casting.  Apart from all the tricky acting in the fast moving changes for the whole cast, Wendy and Peter looked and felt absolutely right in their parts.

The Mill Theatre writes it is “excited to announce the first co-production of 2025”, and I say the more the merrier, especially for the young people on stage and in the audience.  This production is full of life, auguring well for the future of Ribix Productions.

Veronica Baroulina as Wendy
in Peter/Wendy
Ribix Productions, 2025

 

 

©Frank McKone, Canberra

2025: Hidden Canberra - Shortis&Simpson

 

 

 Hidden Canberra by John Shortis and Moya Simpson as Shortis&Simpson at Smith’s Alternative, Canberra City,  Saturday, September 6, 2025.

Reviewed by Frank McKone


I feel somehow like an archaeologist discovering a new site in a cultural landscape, digging up a cultural artefact, recorded in mystery as a ‘Shortis&Simpson’.

Whatever it is, it’s equally funny and fascinating.  Radiocarbon datings of Shortis&Simpsons show them going back nearly 30 years to a site then known as the School of Arts Cafe, Queanbeyan, and they have been found in many similar cultural sites over the years.

Smith’s Alternative – the one-time bookshop, now arts coffee-shop – have provided an accurate rundown of this new example:

“John Shortis and Moya Simpson moved to the Canberra region from Sydney in 1996. John fell instantly in love with a place where history and politics popped up everywhere he looked. For Moya it was where her passion for world music and voices flourished.

 “Hidden Canberra is their tribute to the city and environs, where their creativity has been able to blossom for nearly 30 years.

“With a bunch of original and collected songs, an array of projected images, and a witty and informative script, the wildly interesting and quirky depth of the capital region comes to life.

“Stories of a rainbow coloured airport, a right wing pollie once a serious Canberra punk, public art, musical street names, Lake George as a capital city, and much, much more. And you thought you knew Canberra…Hidden Canberra is Shortis and Simpson’s funny, moving, surprising love letter to the weird and wonderful town that they proudly call home.”

Ken Behrens all will remember the Artificial Intelligence that produced that wonderful failure to translate the spoken word into digital text.  It wasn’t done originally as the joke it became, but in their song about its history,  Canberrans John and Moya tapped right into the mix of feelings we have about ourselves at home in Australia’s National Capital.  Outsiders, who send their parliamentary representatives here, wouldn’t understand how we combine the serious matters of state with a sense of Australian ironic humour about ourselves that the song sparked in the audience.  What an exciting archaeological dig that was.  We found a road warning sign: STAY SAFE  KEN BEHRENS.

The script for Act 1 is 22 pages long; and 23 pages for Act 2. So I can only reveal a few snippets.  This is how the story begins:

We talk of a city that’s freezing and hot,
Where threads of progressiveness thicken the plot
Where humour and hist’ry and knowledge are not
Forbidden…..
We walk through a city where legends abound
Gleaming and dreaming, both light and profound
Where the heart of a nation is beating its sound
In hidden…Canberra

It’s a gentle beginning, but notice rhyming the slightly syncopated “not / Forbidden” with “In hidden...Canberra”.  This is John’s so-called ‘quirky’ song writing, particularly familiar to those, like myself, who have followed Shortis&Simpson since 1996.  It’s not just the words of the songs, nowadays sung with even more variety of character and clarity of articulation as Moya’s voice has matured, but it’s the oddities of rhyme and rhythm in John’s essentially jazz-based approach in his music that keeps us on the qui vive.

So the singing of Section 125 of the Australian Constitution with lines like

The seat of government of the Commonwealth
Shall be determined by Parliament.
Such territory shall contain an area
Not less than one hundred square miles,
And such portion thereof
As shall consist of Crown lands,
Shall be granted to the Commonwealth
Without any payment therefore,
The Parliament shall sit at Melbourne
Till it meet at the seat of government

(i.e. Canberra, which didn’t exist when the Constitution was written)

in John’s musical hands comes to seem like something from Gilbert and Sullivan.

Then the show takes us through a series of songs which reminded me of the weekly Tim the Yowie Man (in the Canberra Times’ Panorama) quest for people to identify a photo of somewhere obscure, often resulting in a hidden historical story – such as this weekend as I write, about Is this the smallest railway platform?

There’s the story of how the Australian Capital Territory voted, on a metre long ballot paper full of party names like the Warm Tomato Party, or The Party Party, against self-government (eat your heart out, Washington, in your days of Donald Trump).  

Politicians’ Statues are a big thing – especially the very few of women: the first to be elected, not until  1943 mind-you, Enid Lyons and Dorothy Tangney, facing the lack of women’s loos in Parliament House.  The theme was developed in the much later story of the Canberra Alpine Club’s Mount Franklin Hut on the Brindabella Range border with New South Wales, where for sewerage reasons - to keep Canberra's water clean - the women had to walk interstate:

But if you stay
At our Chalet,
Be sure your pissport’s up to date
‘Cause you’ll be headed interstate
To have a spray
Heed what I say
Show your I-Dee-ee-ee
Whenever you wee-ee-ee
Show your I-Dee-ee-ee
When you leave the A-ay C-ee-Tee-ee

Enough for now I should say, except for the one song, about the invention of the QASAR electronic keyboard, first shown in the 1970s at Llewellyn Hall at the School of Music, which the Australian National University seems likely to close down very soon.  There was no laughter this time:

John sings - 
A centre of sound
Climbing
Careering
Bathe in a wave
That’s never disappearing
(Moya oohs in background)
Ground breaking
Risk-taking
Trail blazer
QASAR

Save the ANU School of Music! says everyone.
 

Though there’s another hour to go in the show, I shall come to the end here, with the beginning.  Near the ACT, on the Sydney side, is Lake George, famous for its rapidly changing water levels from undergound sources.  I’ve seen it almost entirely dry, or flooding onto the main road, the Federal Highway, in different years.  Here’s the script:

John speaks –

Back at the beginning of the 20th century, when the call was made for nominations for Australia’s capital city, Lake George was actually proposed. Here’s an artist’s impression of what the lake could look like in that role- Venice meets Lake George.

Only problem being that when a team of senators came to inspect the site, the enigmatic lake did its thing and the water that is so prolific in that design was virtually non-existent.

Fortunately, instead of looking like a European city of long ago, we now have a pristine and important part of our environment, sacred for the indigenous people of our district. 

This is the song John wrote for The Universal Lake in 1998.

Moya sings – of the traditional custodians of this land, the Ngunnawal and Ngamberri peoples, who know Lake George, named after King George IV, as Weereewa.  You see the origin of the name, Canberra, right there.

Ancient lake, eight million years,
Ancient land, salt in the tears,
Grassy bank, inland sea,
Stone unturned, mystery,
Ngunnawal, Weereewa,
Ngamberri, Weereewa,

Muddy bed, emu bone,
Bogong moth, pumice stone,
Sudden squall, choppy sea,
Waterweed, eucalypt tree,
Ngunnawal, Weereewa
Ngamberri, Weereewa,
Ngarrigo, Gandangarra, Wiradjari,
Walbinga, Wandandian, Wiradjuri, 

Level fall, level rise,
Frozen death, boat capsize,
Charcoal burn, kangaroo,
Mine the sand, steal the view,
Ngunnawal, Weereewa,
Ngamberri, Weereewa,
Ngunnawal, Weereewa,
Ngamberri, Weereewa    

Moya Simpson and John Shortis
in love with Canberra

©Frank McKone, Canberra

2025: Romeo and Juliet - Bell Shakespeare

 

 

 Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare.  Bell Shakespeare at Canberra Theatre Playhouse, August 29 – September 7 2025.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
Opening Night, September 1

Director – Peter Evans
Set & Costume Designer – Anna Tregloan
Lighting Designer – Benjamin Cisterne
Composer & Sound Designer – Max Lyandvert
Associate Fight Director – Thomas Royce-Hampton
Voice & Understudy Director – Jack Starkey-Gill
Choreographer – Simone Sault

Cast:
Juliet – Madeline Li; Nurse – Merridy Eastman; Paris – Jack Halabi
Romeo – Ryan Hodson; Friar – Khisraw Jones-Shukoor
Tybalt – Tom Mathews; Mercutio / Prince – Brittany Santariga
Benvolio – James Thomasson; Capulet – Michael Wahr
Lady Capulet – Adinia Wirasti
Understudy – Caitlin Burley; Thomas Royce-Hampton


William Shakespeare makes it very clear that he is presenting us with a play, which
 
“Is now the two hours’ traffic of our stage; 
The which if you with patient ears attend, 
What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend.”

Bell Shakespeare, in this production thoroughly true to William’s intention, makes sure we miss nothing.  We see actors working brilliantly, taking on their characters, presenting us with a play of words, often times a play on words.

This requires, for a start, a director who clearly understands and knows how to impart that understanding of what is known as Presentational Style – the style necessary for Romeo and Juliet to become far more than a sentimental sob story of the two lovers’ deaths.  

It is a morality play about political ‘families’ becoming trapped in conflicts based purely on ‘loyalties’ and misrepresentations to the point of self-destruction.  

The only hope Shakespeare could offer was to have Capulet say finally “O brother Montague! Give me thy hand”, while Montague offers a grand “statue in pure gold” to commemorate Juliet.

If they had shaken hands from the beginning of the young men's violence, as the Prince had ordered, then it would not have become such a story of more woe.  Like the stories of Palestine and Israel, say.

The full value of this work by Peter Evans and his exciting team of actors is in the clarity of all those words, their meanings and their implications.  We feel particularly, as Evans’ writes in an excellent From the Director, for Romeo who “says of his intervention in the fight between Mercutio and Tybalt: I thought all for the best.”

But there is never such a thing as a ‘just’ war.  “Go hence” says the Prince of Verona in the play’s last words, “to have more talk of these sad things; 

For never was a story of more woe
Than this of Juliet and her Romeo.”

I thank Bell Shakespeare for the honesty and sincerity of their presentation of Romeo and Juliet.  

Their toil is not to be missed.



©Frank McKone, Canberra

2025: The Drawer Boy by Michael Healey

 

 

 The Drawer Boy by Michael Healey.  Mockingbird Theatre Company at Belconnen Arts Centre (Belco Arts), Canberra, August 21-30, 2025.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
August 23

CAST: (in order of appearance)
Angus – Chris Baldock; Miles – Callum Doherty; Morgan – Richard Manning

PRODUCTION TEAM:
Director – Zac Bridgman
Stage Manager – Rhiley Winnett
Lighting Design – Rhiley Winnett and Zac Bridgman
Sound Design – Rhiley Winnett, Zac Bridgman and Chris Baldock
Set Design – Chris Baldock
Set Realisation – Chris Baldock, Richard Manning, cast and crew
Projections – Chris Baldock
Projection, Sound & Lighting Operation – Rhiley Winnett
Costumes – Cast
Props – Chris Baldock, Richard Manning, cast and crew


The Drawer Boy – meaning the boy who drew – is the perfect choice for the ironically named Mockingbird Company, for this play is essentially full of irony.  AI says Irony occurs when events or words are the opposite of what is expected, creating a sense of surprise, humor, or deeper meaning in literature, rhetoric, and everyday situations. 

We can trust AI on this occasion, because Mockingbird’s production creates all those things, out of everyday situations, from the opposite of what we expect, through surprise and humour to an ending with a deeper meaning – even with a bit of rhetoric thrown in by an over-enthusiastic university educated budding playwright/actor, Miles, researching what a farmer’s life is really all about.

But the tricky part of performing this script, for the director and the actors, is that the characters at first – and even for the whole first hour-long Act One – are almost cartoonish caricatures.  It reminded me of the nearest Australian material to compare with this Canadian work, Dad and Dave from Snake Gully, from an earlier time in history, (the radio show aired from 1937 to 1953), beginning before the World War II which turns out to be the most important part of The Drawer Boy in Act Two.

Directing and acting all the silences between those often tacitern ironic words or surprising outbursts is how the play works.  Zac Bridgman and all three actors got it all right last night.  That’s much better than just alright!

Since I was born in 1941, the year that Angus and Morgan enlisted in Canada and found themselves in France, though I was close to being hit by a V-bomb in 1944, I was lucky not to be hit by shrapnel like Angus.  

On the other hand, now in my mid-eighties with a typically embarrassing erratic short-term memory and no memory for names of people or places, I appreciated Chris Baldock’s awful, and therefore thoroughly successful performance of the damaged Angus.

Like Angus I found the naivety and rapidity of Miles’ speech a bit hard to take (even though I was guilty in my 20’s of over-the-top drama), which means that Callum Doherty started well and ended even better when his understanding of the old men’s lives reached a genuine level of empathy.  Surely now he is ready to write his play about farmers – just like Michael Healey himself!

And then Richard Manning’s Morgan held the play together – just as Morgan’s loving, respectful and determined caring for his friend, from boyhood, through times of war and hope of marriage together with the tall and the taller English girls, could hold the mentally disabled Angus together.  

I can’t praise 65 year-old Richard too much, since I was his drama teacher in his Year Twelve.

But I can say how much I enjoyed the cows mooing and chooks chuckling, and the clever way Angus’s architectural drawing was reflected in the backdrops.  Their farm became the landscape of practical life and memories, with the right style in the accompanying music, that I am sure Michael Healey would love.

I had, amazingly, never heard of this 1999 play.  But perhaps Canadians have not heard of Dad and Dave from Snake Gully.  I suggest an excellent follow-up read is at https://www.canadiantheatre.com/dict.pl?term=The%20Drawer%20Boy

So let’s not take Mockingbird literally.  Go see The Drawer Boy.


©Frank McKone, Canberra

2025: The Chosen Vessel by Dylan Van Den Berg

 

 The Chosen Vessel by Dylan Van Den Berg at The Street Theatre, Canberra, August 12 – 16, 2025.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
Opening Night August 12

Director: Abbie-lee Lewis
Set Designer: Angie Matsinos
Costume Designer: Leah Ridley
Lighting Designer: Nathan Sciberras
Sound Designer: Kyle Sheedy
Photos: Canberra Streets, Helen Fletcher

Cast

WOMAN and GHOST– Laila Thaker

SWAGMAN, HUSBAND, YOUNG MAN, HORSEMAN,
BARMAN, TRAVELLERS and PRIEST – Craig Alexander
__________________________________________________________________________________

Dylan Van Den Berg’s The Chosen Vessel is a work of poetic theatre.  Words have meanings beyond the immediate in a setting of half-seen images in light and sound, creating a world full of emotional power.  The writer’s imagination appears as if real in this wonderful yet disturbing production.  

When reading a good poem, one’s imagination and feelings respond to the words, reaching an aha moment as you find yourself coming to an understanding in the last line.  In the theatre, our imaginations are enhanced by the stimulating work in the set design, lighting, sound and costumes, as well as, of course, in the directing and skills of the two actors in movement, facial expression and voice.

Laila Thaker, Craig Alexander
in The Chosen Vessel by Dylan Van Den Berg
The Street Theatre, Canberra 2025
Photos: Helen Fletcher

 This excellent production in the small Street Two space becomes a total poem.  That last line is “If the dead can see, why can’t you?”  

Then you understand what it means to describe this work as "Aboriginal Gothic Horror", and realise the nature of the truth about the European cultural invasion of Aboriginal Land – in practical terms:

                        Baby cries.
                        GHOST hangs a string of shells around baby’s neck.
                        GHOST disappears.
                        Sounds of the river:
                                            Blackout.
                                           THE END



Australia’s iconic publisher of our theatre – Currency Press – have made the script available with the program.  I suggest, though, that you see the play as I did without preconceptions.  Then reading The Chosen Vessel by Palawa man Dylan Van Den Berg, “after the short story by Barbara Baynton” will take you through the experience again that only live theatre can give you, and keep it as a living memory and understanding forever. 

 

 Frank McKone's reviews are also accessible at www.frankmckone2.blogspot.com 

 

©Frank McKone, Canberra 

 

2025: Mr Burton - movie

 Mr Burton – Movie.  Dendy Canberra preview August 7 2025.

Reviewed by Frank McKone


Director: Marc Evans
Producer: Trevor Matthews, Ed Talfan, Josh Hyams, Hannah Thomas
Writers: Tom Bullough & Josh Hyams

Cast 
Toby Jones as teacher Mr. Burton; Harry Lawtey as his student, Richie Jenkins who becomes Richard Burton.
With  Steffan Rhodri, Lesley Manville, Daniel Evans, Aimee-Ffion Edwards, Aneurin Barnard

Rating: Mature themes and coarse language

Film making is an enormous undertaking.  For the full cast and crew listing go to IMDb at www.imdb.com/title/tt5171016/fullcredits/ 

___________________________________________________________________________________

Whatever view you may have of the one-time world famous Welsh actor, Richard Burton, you must see this remarkable movie to appreciate what he really was like – as an actor and as himself.

The publicity overview is useful, especially if like me you had no idea of Richard Burton’s personal life: Set against the grit of post-war Wales, MR BURTON is the extraordinary true story of a working-class boy destined for greatness and the teacher who saw it first. When Philip Burton, a principled and passionate schoolteacher in Port Talbot, meets Richie Jenkins, a volatile yet gifted teen from a fractured home, he recognises a spark that others have overlooked. Through mentorship, discipline, and love, Philip shapes Richie’s raw talent, setting him on the path to becoming Richard Burton, one of the greatest actors of the 20th century.

The details of Richie Jenkins’ family and how he was brought up by his elder sister, and his relationship with Philip Burton, form the central through-line of the drama, which brought me to tears, of fear for his future and joy for his success as he performed Prince Hal at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in Stratford upon Avon in 1951, directed by Anthony Quayle.

The remarkable thing about the film is how these actors – particularly in the key roles of Philip Burton and Richie Jenkins developing into Richard Burton – have to be such wonderful actors that they can make us believe in these other actors.  Philip Burton realises from Jenkins’ reactions in English class that he has the capacity to perform but needs to be trained.  So we see Richie being trained in some surprising, sometimes very funny, ways, which means that we see Toby Jones acting demonstrating how to act, and Harry Lawtey acting innocently badly until finally he acts Richard Burton acting as he really did as Prince Hal – after he has acted Richard Burton become a drunkard and smoker, and telling off Anthony Quayle (played by Daniel Evans) in rehearsal.

After you’ve seen the movie, and know how you feel about how Richie Jenkins felt from the age of about 13 to 26, it’s interesting to read, for example, what his younger brother Graham Jenkins and other local people told of the family in the setting of the mining country in Wales in Memories of Richard Burton at https://dramaticheart.wales/our-valleys/afan-valley/richard-burton/memories-of-richard-burton/.  And at https://lisawallerrogers.com/tag/richard-burtons-father in Lisa’s History Room there’s more fine detail about Dic Jenkins (played by Steffan  Rhodri).

And I have to confess, only two years after Burton’s first great success in 1951, my English teacher had this 13 year-old, in Form Two, up on stage in a public reading at Enfield Grammar School – as Prince Hal!  Of course, though I had no Philip Burton to adopt me and change my name, it is true that that was the beginning of my drama interest and future academic and teaching career.  

And for Canberra readers especially, it was only last Tuesday that the invited speaker, at our Canberra Critics’ Circle gathering, was Lexi Sekuless, producer at the Mill Theatre, whose work is reviewed here.  She gave us a fascinating run-down of her actor training in London, and the differences between the approach at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), with its more formal convention – something like the Royal Shakespeare Company style which Richard Burton faced in Stratford upon Avon – and the more modern style of the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, where Lexi acquired the far more varied skills and approaches to characterisation and staging styles which we see in Mill Theatre’s production of Enron, finishing shortly.

Watching Richie Jenkins under Philip Burton’s tutelage reminded me of Lexi Sekuless’s explanation of how that Central approach had broken actors away from the other famous technique – the American Method – and how working all these ways through in Australia has resulted nowadays in a kind of practical strength in our actors who do so well in the modern film industry.

And, I suspect the acting in this film, made in Wales – not in the English establishment setting – has some of that flair that we have in Australia.  Whether you thought you liked Richard Burton with Elizabeth Taylor or not, you can’t not like Harry Lawtey with Toby Jones, with the women, Lesley Manville and Aimee-Ffion Edwards as Ma Smith (Philip Burton’s landlady) and Cis (Richie’s sister) who held the real Richie together and whose acting hold the movie together, in my view.

Not to be missed – from August 14th.

Toby Jones as teacher Mr. Burton; Harry Lawtey as his student, Richie Jenkins

 ©Frank McKone, Canberra

 

2025: Stages of Empathy - Rebus Theatre

 

 

Stages of Empathy presented by Rebus Theatre.  Opening night at Ralph Wilson Theatre, Gorman Arts Centre, Canberra.  July 31. 2025.

Reviewed by Frank McKone

Artistic Director and Joker: Sammy Moynihan – He/Him 
Project Manager: Harry Bhangu – He/Him
Wellbeing Officer: Verity Kimpton – She/Her
Accessibility Manager: Yenn Purkis – They/Them

Cast – Opening Night
Terry: Krystle Vicencio – She/Her
Jordan: Mark Polhuis – He/Him
Lee: Emily Smith
Alex / Sam: Zander Hanmer-Woods – He/Him

Cast – August 1
Jay Taylor – She/Her plays Lee
Josh Rose – He/Him plays Terry and Sam
Zander Hanmer-Woods plays Jordan


Sammy Moynihan tells me of his experience in Brazil where he was inspired by Augusto Boal’s approach to making political change.  AI is useful for summarising about Theatre of Oppression:

AI Overview
Founder of the Theater of the Oppressed, playwright Augusto Boal, a Brazilian theatre practitioner, developed the Theatre of the Oppressed (TO) as a form of popular education using theatre to address social and political issues. Forum theatre, one of the techniques within TO, specifically focuses on empowering audiences to actively participate in the performance, influencing and changing the narrative to explore solutions to oppression. Boal's work, particularly his concept of the "spect-actor," encourages audience members to become active agents of change, stepping into the performance to explore alternative actions and resolutions to the presented conflict.

The oppressed people Moynihan is concerned about are those with disabilities who are excluded unfairly from activities and decision-making positions in workplaces, often because of  biased views about disabled people.

Rebus Theatre has always been about involving disabled members of the company performing theatre in the standard way – for an audience to watch and become aware of the actors’ capacities, and so for the abled to learn to recognise, perhaps intuitively, their biases against the disabled.

In Stages of Empathy, Moynihan and his team take us to the next stage in a cleverly devised form of Forum Theatre.  As a one-time drama teacher, I see this work as a form of educational drama – as enjoyable and as much a learning experience that I hope my classes were.

The politics is at the personal relationship level rather than at Boal’s governmental revolution level.  On a day-to-day level in the office, especially here in a public service town, learning how to make fair and more effective approaches to decisions for and by other people – disabled or not – is what Stages of Empathy is all about.

The Rebus actors play a shortish couple of office scenes in an organisation supporting artists – in this case visual artists, drawing, painting or sculpting.  The CEO is explaining to a new recruit in the management that for this year’s upcoming exhibition, Jordan’s artwork should be included because it is excellent, but Jordan should not be allowed to be present to talk to the public, especially the media, because last year he was an embarrassment, going into some kind of explosive panic attack which showed the organisation in a bad light.

The CEO Terry is insistent; Lee, inexperienced in her new management role, wants to offer an exciting sound-and-light show, and needs to please her boss; Alex is one of the artists, already very successful, who tries to push Jordan along.  But Jordan has a disability because of which loud sounds and bright lights will overwhelm him – the cause of the panic attack last year.

After the performances, Sammy takes on what I saw as the teacher role, inviting members of the audience to stop the action as the actors begin to repeat the performance, and to come on stage to take over one of the characters and show how that character could have made a better decision towards not just being fair and supportive to Jordan at this point in planning the exhibition, but to help make the relationships warmer, less bureaucratic, leading to a successful exhibition for Jordan and also for the organisation as a whole.

Usually, Rebus is working for this kind of relationship development in a workshop training situation.  It needs an intimate space for a theatre presentation for the general public.  

The theatre at Gorman House, suitably named after one-time Principal of Canberra High School, Ralph Wilson – famous in his day for his support of the arts and particularly drama – plays the role perfectly.  As did Rebus’ actors.

And, as it should, the show on opening night became an evening of lively action and thoughtful discussion by everyone no longer just in the “audience”.  A very successful Rebus project indeed towards unbiassing people towards disability.

Rebus Theatre - Stages of Empathy
The actors ready for action

 

 ©Frank McKone, Canberra

 

 

2025: Enron at Mill Theatre

 

 Enron by Lucy Prebble (UK).  Lexi Sekuless Productions at Mill Theatre, Dairy Road, Fyshwick, Canberra July 31 – August 9, 2025.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
July 31

CREATIVES & COMPANY

Cast
Jeffrey Skilling: Jay James Moody; Andy Fastow: Oliver Bailey
Jen (gender changed from Ken) Lay and Ensemble: Andrea Close
Claudia Roe and Ensemble: Lexi Sekuless
Ensemble: Rhys Hekimian, Timmy Sekuless, Alana Denham-Preston

Production Team
Direction for this production was completed by the production team and our rehearsal support team. 
Writer: Lucy Prebble
Set Designer: Soham Apte; Costume Designer: Caitlin Hodder
Lighting Designer: Andrew Snell; Sound Designer: Damian Ashcroft
Production Stage Manager: Chips Jin
Assistant Stage Managers: Paige Macdonald and Bea Grant
Contingencies and Rehearsal Support: Rachel Howard, Jen Noveski, Kate Blackhurst, Heidi Silberman, Maxine Beaumont, Goldele Rayment, PJ Williams
Photographer: Daniel Abroguena
Publicity images: Andrea Close, Rhys Hekimian, Steph Roberts

Producer: Lexi Sekuless Productions; Principal Sponsor: Willard Public Affairs
Special thanks to Molonglo,  Mojo Guitars and PJ Williams

L to R: Jay James Moody as Jeffrey Skilling; Andrea Close as Jen Lay
Oliver Bailey as Andy Fastow; Lexi Sekuless as Claudia Roe
The Party Scene in Enron by Lucy Prebble
Mill Theatre, Canberra 2025

Karl Marx wrote in Das Kapital (Capital: A Critique of Political Economy) in 1867 that Capitalism contains the seeds of its own destruction.  

Lexi Sekuless and The Mill team’s brilliant production of Enron by British playwright Lucy Prebble proves the point 150 years later, in this quite extraordinary satire of the “spectacular rise and notorious fall of the American energy giant Enron and its founding partners Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling”, as Sydney’s New Theatre described it in the Australian premiere in 2013.

Company Secretary Jen Lay in charge.  Ideas man Andy Fastow in background.

Andy Fastow explaining phantom investment system.

Claudia Roe working on company owner Jeffrey Skilling (out of shot)

The Mill, in politically diplomatic Canberra, may not see itself quite like the New Theatre which “was set up in 1932 as the Sydney Workers Art Club, opening with the slogan ‘Art is a Weapon’”, but when you’ve seen this Enron, which you must because it has such a clever design and terrific acting, you should look up Steve Evans’ amazing article in the Canberra Times today as I write (Thursday July 31, 2025 Page 4) headlined Star-spangled soiree where diplomacy’s done to a ‘T’, about the “unmentionable spectre [Mr T] at the magnificent party thrown at the American embassy…[where the] fireworks and herds of brisket and pork-belly barbecue were in celebration of American independence from the British”.

You’ll see a party rather like this - minus the barbecue - on the Mill Theatre stage – with every nuance of underhand meaning similar to Evans’ reporting: “But mentioning the T word [to Meta’s representative] felt a bit like passing wind in church – just not done”.  My point is that though this play was written by a British woman playwright in 2009, it foreshadows America’s progress to today’s President T.  The satire is telling – exciting to watch, especially in close-up in the tiny Mill Theatre; but the truth it reveals is frightening as much as it is illuminating.

It’s important, too, that we have a theatre company in Canberra presenting us, including our national public servants and politicians, with the confronting conclusion – that by not regulating the financial market, especially the use of phantom investment companies, we are all guilty of setting up exactly what Karl Marx predicted.

Yet, as Jeffrey Skilling believed even after years in jail, performed with real sincerity by Jay James Moody, he had never intended to cause economic breakdown: he was merely trying to “change the world” for the better.  Though dangerous climate warming is not mentioned in this play, it has been technical innovation and developments in financial markets – over the past few thousand years – aimed at expanding economic activity and improving people’s incomes,  and the inevitable profiteering, which is now threatening us with worse even than Karl Marx imagined.  Some say not just economic chaos and warfare, but the self-destruction of our species.

 Ironically in the play, Andy Fastow makes a big point of the 'Darwinian evolution' of modern business.  

Lexi Sekuless, in presenting this play and so artfully performing it (herself included) in a wonderful tightly directed small team (New Theatre used 15 actors), must be recognised for both the quality and the importance of her work.

Please don’t miss Enron at the Mill Theatre.

 P.S. The fictional character in Prebble’s play, Claudia Roe, appears to have been based on the true woman involved in Enron’s history: Rebecca Mark.  
See https://commongroundolivia.blogspot.com/2016/12/the-real-claudia-roe.html 

©Frank McKone, Canberra

2025: Emerald City by David Williamson

 

 

 

 

 

Emerald City by David Williamson.  Ensemble Theatre, Sydney, July 18 – August 23, 2025.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
July 26

Director: Mark Kilmurry
Asst Director: Tiffany Wong; Set & Costume Designer: Dan Potra
Lighting Design: Morgan Moroney; Composer & Sound: Madeleine Picard
Stage Manager: Lauren Tulloh; Asst Stage Manager: Bella Wellstead
Photography: Phil Erbacher

Cast:
Helen – Aisha Aidara; Elaine – Danielle Carter; Kate – Rachel Gordon
Mike – Matt Minto; Colin – Tom O’Sullivan; Malcolm – Rajan Velu

 

Aisha Aidara as Helen, Matt Minto as Mike

Tom O’Sullivan as Colin, Danielle Carter as Elaine

 

Although I can’t be specific about what changes David Williamson has made to update Emerald City since its first production in 1987, it seemed to me in the Ensemble Theatre’s much more intimate space than the large wide postbox stage in the Drama Theatre at Sydney Opera House, the play full of one-liners about the business of being a playwright, zinged along much more smartly than I remember from nearly 40 years ago.

I think too, though I can hardly imagine it, that this cast could be any better than theatrical icons (Colin) Garry McDonald, (Elaine) Ruth Cracknell, (Kate) Robyn Nevin, (Mike) Drew Forsythe , and now QUT Associate Professor (Helen) Andrea Moor.  

Yet Tom O’Sullivan, Danielle Carter, Rachel Gordon and Aisha Aidara, along with a raucus Matt Minto and so-cool and collected Rajan Velu, captured, I’m certain from Mark Kilmurry’s directing skills, every twist and turn of ironic pronouncements that made each character so distinctive – and seemingly real.  The play stayed in its 1980s period, but now has so much more depth in its implications about being ethical as well as money-making.

Or maybe I’m just seeing more in it now than I could in my state of understanding 40 years ago without a Trump in the deal of my cards back then.

The argument between the Melbournites who read books on the tram against the Sydneyites who just read the morning paper, made the play an amusing comedy – and still does – but the frustrations Colin faces now, and especially the effect he has on his wife Kate, as well as the success of Mike’s pragmatic commerciality, gives the humour, on reflection after the laughter, a new blacker edge.

This Emerald City is a play for our time perhaps even more than it was in its time – and it was truly famous then.  Don’t miss it now.

Rachel Gordon as Kate

Whole cast of Emerald City,
L to R: Colin – Tom O’Sullivan    Mike – Matt Minto    Kate – Rachel Gordon 
Malcolm – Rajan Velu   Elaine – Danielle Carter Helen – Aisha Aidara


Ensemble Theatre 2025

©Frank McKone, Canberra

2025: Illume - Bangarra Dance Theatre

 

 

Illume – Bangarra Dance Theatre.  Canberra Theatre Centre July 25-26 2025-07-27

Reviewed by Frank McKone
July 25 

Choreography: Frances Rings and artists of Bangarra Dance Theatre  

Artistic & Cultural Collaborator: Darrell Sibosado  

Composition: Brendon Boney  

Set Design: Charles Davis; Costume Design: Elizabeth Gadsby; Lighting Design: Damien Cooper. Cultural Consultant: Trevor Sampi. 

Dancers:Lillian Banks, Courtney Radford, Kallum Goolagong, Daniel Mateo, Emily Flannery, Janaya Lamb, Kassidy Waters, Jye Uren, Maddison Paluch, James Boyd, Chantelle Lee Lockhart, Amberlilly Gordon, Donta Witham, Zeak Tass, Edan Porter,Tamara Bouman, Roxie Syron, Eli Clarke.

___________________________________________________________________________________

If I were to tell you about me, I would begin with my grandfather on my mother’s side – a Cockney, born within the sound of the Bow Bells who could read the newspaper upside down and back to front in the mirror (because he was a compositor).  And so I am a Londoner, who went to Enfield Grammar School, a state school approved by Queen Elizabeth in about 1550.  She went riding at ‘Endfield” and supported education for the ordinary people.  That was where I played the part of Prince Hal in Shakespeare’s play when I was in Form 2.

Yet on my father’s side, my grandmother was a Welsh Methodist, and my Uncle Llewellyn in Cardiff played Chopin on the piano and was a Socialist and a Naturopath who told me that “everyone’s the same without their clothes on”.  

And now I have lived in Australia for 70 years and became legally an Australian in 1975. And you think you know who I am.

So when you read in the Illume program that Artistic & Cultural Collaborator Darrell Sibosado  is a "Goolarrgon Bard man from Lombadina, Western Australia, whose multidisciplinary practice reimagines the traditional pearl shell carving practices into contemporary art; and Frances Rings is a Mirning woman from the Far West Region of South Australia and also has German Heritage", you are only just beginning to know who these people are.

A dance for me would have to include Irish (McKone is, I think, West Coast of Ireland from the 18th Century), probably Anglo-Saxon from 1500 years ago, and maybe French or Jewish from up to 1000 years ago (my mother's maiden name was Solly).  

Yet that’s nothing compared to the Australian history of around 600 peoples beginning some 65,000 years ago.

So just as I saw Shakespeare’s play, Julius Caesar, performed in a modern style and interpretation by the Russian-named Chaika Theatre on Wednesday, on Friday I saw Bangarra’s story of the history of the Lombadina and Djarindjin people who live on the North-West Dampier Peninsula, from the rising of the sea-level as the last Ice Age melted and formed King Sound 7000 years ago, in a very up-to-date modern dance style in a very modern highly technical audio-visual setting.

In eleven scenes over 90 minutes, centred on Ngarrgidj Morr (the Proper Path), the dance takes us through all the changes from times of a sense of freedom and positive excitement through times of hardship, focussed on how, to quote the excellent program, “All living things are interconnected in harmony.  Goolarrgon people navigate Country with purpose, changing their behaviours to align with the true rhythm of Country.”

It is like, in my culture, dancing all the scenes you can imagine from Ancient Egypt, Ancient Greece, the Roman Empire, the Middle Ages, the French Revolution and Colonialism, with hope for World Peace.  

Bangarra gives us that hope.

©Frank McKone, Canberra 

 

2025: Echo

 

Echo (Every Cold-Hearted Oxygen) apparently written by Nassim Soleimanpour and directed by Omar Elerian.  
Co-commissioned by Canberra Theatre Centre at The Playhouse, July 24-26, 2025.

Possible Actors:
Fayssal Bazzi – seen on July 24
Benjamin Law, Nathalie Morris, or Paula Arundell on other occasions.

Other creatives, designers and technicians – no information apparently provided.



Because I could not understand what was going on in Canberra Theatre Playhouse last night, I asked Google AI if Echo is genuine.  It appeared to me that the person on stage wasn’t acting, but was simply responding as himself to instructions and questions being put to him by someone apparently in Berlin, who had migrated there from Iran, on a 90 minute video call.

Here’s the question I put, and the beginning part of the AI answer:

Is the theatre production Echo genuine?  Are the actors live on the internet in Berlin and Canberra? 

Yes, the theatre production "Echo" is genuine, and it does feature actors performing live on stage in Canberra while interacting with the playwright, Nassim Soleimanpour, who appears to be live via the internet from Berlin. The show intentionally blurs the lines between reality and performance, using live video feeds, pre-recorded footage, and live interaction to create a unique and unpredictable theatrical experience.

AI then gives more details under headings:
    Live, Unrehearsed Performance
    Real-Time Connection with the Playwright
    Blending Live and Pre-Recorded
    Uncertainty and Authenticity
    Thematic Exploration

And ends with “While the show plays with the audience's perception of reality, the live interaction between the actor and the playwright, as well as the unrehearsed nature of the performance, are genuine aspects of the production.”

So, in fact, I have no play to review.  The early part, when the “actor” was given an envelope and took out a long document which he read out loud about the writer’s process of writing, is monumentally uninteresting.  You couldn’t call this a ‘performance’.

Then when the connection settles down with Berlin (apparently) it is more interesting when it seems that our ‘actor’ is also middle eastern and migrated to Australia to escape the warfare conditions, and so the two of them discuss the migration experience, very much in terms of emotionally remaining Iranian or Lebanese and so never quite accepting themselves as, or not being accepted as, German or Australian.

Though there is no acting going on, since there’s no script for our actor to perform, it’s obvious that at the Berlin end there is a stack of prepared material about the experience of leaving Iran, apparently including some pre-recorded video and what may be live interactions between Nassim and other people. The time difference between evening here and morning in Berlin doesn't seem to matter.

Of course the migrant experience and issues around refugees and the possibility of returning home is of interest, but this conversation has no direction, no dramatic structure, and ends nowhere in particular.  

Since a different ‘actor’ takes part at each presentation, the conversation will be different each night,  So to really see Echo, you would have to go every night throughout the run in Canberra.  Then you should travel to the next venue, wherever it may be in the world, to keep up.

In fact, what Echo is really about is an abstract – and therefore necessarily untheatrical – highly intellectual exposition of a philosophy, which seems to say that human life only exists as a mental construct which each of our brains put together from the remains of memories of our individual pasts.

When I taught Years 11/12 Philosophy, coming up with such ideas was a feature of working out who you were and what you really believed, but philosophising is nothing like creating a drama for an audience to become emotionally engaged in, which is what theatre art is all about.

Perhaps I can imagine writing a song called “Echoes in My Mind”.  Then you can imagine what it might say and sound like, and sing it to yourself.  And write your own review!

 ©Frank McKone, Canberra

2025: 21 Hearts

 

 

21 Hearts – Vivian Bullwinkel & the Nurses of the Vyner Brooke by Jenny Davis. Theatre 180 presented at the Australian War Memorial, Canberra.

July 24/25 | 11am & 7pm    July 26 | 2pm & 7pm

July 31 | 11am & 7pm          Aug 1 | 11am & 7pm

Aug 2 | 2pm & 7pm              Aug 3 | 5pm

WRITER 
Jenny Davis OAM 
DIRECTOR 
Stuart Halusz 

CAST 
Caitlin Beresford-Ord; Rebecca Davis; Michelle Fornasier
Alex Jones; Helen Searle; Alison van Reeken
 
Rebecca Davis plays Vivian Bullwinkel

Reviewed by Frank McKone
July 24

L-R:  Caitlin Beresford-Ord, Alison van Reeken, Rebecca Davis, Alex Jones, Michelle Fornasier, Helen Searle

 

21 Hearts is a living breathing documentary with an extraordinary emotional effect, only achievable by live performances, supported by projected historical material.  If you ever wondered if some War Museums may do more than only commemorate wars, by seeming to encourage a fascination with wars past,  you will not doubt the Australian War Memorial’s purpose in presenting this play in its new theatre.

Many times during her service from 1942 to 1945, when she alone had survived the enemy’s treatment of her and her nursing colleagues, Vivian exclaimed, out of a deep sense of guilt, “I should not be here.  I should have died with the others on the beach.”

But always a personal chance of caring for, of supporting, or saving someone else’s life would revive her determination to not give up.  These were the moments which hit home to the heart, especially for me, but I’m sure for everyone in the audience, many of whom were nurses who have faced difficult conflicting circumstances as they often do, even outside the fog of war.

The quality of this production – the acting, singing and movement, the costuming, and the technical audio-visual presentation – is absolutely top-class.  With mood swings from humour in the face of the threat of death, to the horror not only of direct hits but also of their captors’ terrible treatment of them – despite their rights as international Red Cross nurses – directing this play requires a tight discipline to make the drama true to reality, which Stuart Halusz has clearly achieved.

It’s that very discipline that is the creed for nurses everywhere, as it is for these actors in creating these nurses’ stories.  Their teamwork lifts the drama off the stage so we feel as they and their characters feel.

Each of us will have our personal response to this experience.  The play does not make Vivian into the conventional idea of ‘hero’.  Known as ‘Bully’ by all, we come to know her as an ordinary person, like ourselves, getting on with what needs to be done, if that’s possible, and working to help others no matter the circumstances with what I would call practical empathy.

The reason I felt so emotionally affected goes back to my birth.  In January 1941 (in UK) I was named Frank after my mother’s favourite brother had been called up, posted to France and had disappeared – only to reappear when I was 5 years old, having walked across Europe from Poland, where he had been made to work in forestry for the Germans.  Like Vivian and those nurses on Sumatra had to provide their Japanese captors with their nursing services.

Like so many, my uncle never told details of his story, and how he survived.  

Seeing 21 Hearts has made me realise and understand anew why my father had taken the stand as a conscientious objector to being conscripted as my uncle had been; and it has reinforced my own determination, when I turned 18 in Australia, to take the same stand as my father against National Service, which was still compulsory in 1959.

Neither of us were sent to jail for opposing war. The wartime court decided to classify my father’s trade, plasterer,  as a ‘reserved occupation’ so he worked on repairing war damaged houses in London for the war years.  In Sydney, a magistrate rejected my claim, but on appeal to a higher court, a judge ordered I must be put in a medical corps where I would be “saving lives, not taking lives”.  I was allowed to defer going until I finished university – and by then National Service had been abandoned; weirdly not long before the 18th Birthday lottery began sending young men to the Vietnam War.

And still, at 84, I sometimes feel that guilt, when I think of those who did not come back from Vietnam, or continue to suffer the mental anguish caused by their experiences there.

Certainly go to see 21 Hearts – Vivian Bullwinkel & the Nurses of the Vyner Brooke, but be prepared for its highly personal impact on your thoughts and feelings about what in earlier times used to be called Glorious War.

Rebecca Davis as Vivian Bullwinkel
in 21 Hearts Jenny Davis OAM

©Frank McKone, Canberra