One more voice to the general cheer MAN FROM MUKINUPIN by Suzanne Spunner The Man from M ukinupin by Dorothy Hewett. Melbourne Theatre Company. Russell Street. Theatre, Melbourne. Opened February II. 1981. Director. Judith Alexander; Designer, Anna French; Music composed by Elizabeth Rule; Musical Staging, Joe Latona; Musical Director, Graham Clarke; Lighting Designer. Jamie Lewis. Cast: Jack Harry Tuesday. Chris Orchard; Polly Perkins Touch of Tar, Vivien Davies; Miss Clarry Hummer/The Widow Tuesday, Rosie Sturgess; Miss Clemmy Hummer. Marion Edward; Edie Perkins, Beverley Dunn; Eek Zeek Perkins. Anthony Hawkins; Mercy Montebello, Marie Redshaw; Cecil Brunner,/ Max Montebello The Flasher. John Bowman.
The Man from Mukinupin was comm issioned for the sequicentennial cele brations of and premiered in Perth last year. By the end of this year it will have been produced in Adelaide, Melbourne and Sydney, in an unprecedented progress from the West to the East. It has already been hailed as Hewett’s best play and must be ranked alongside The Doll and Stretch o f the Imagination as an Australian classic. After seeing the MTC production, and almost inspite of it, 1 can only add one more voice to the general cheer. From all accounts the Perth production under Hewett’s guidance and with Noni Hazlehurst and Richard Tulloch in the lead roles has been definitive, so far, and certainly the Melbourne production pre sented no challenge — even to hearsay. No other Australian playwright can draw so effortlessly on such a store of language and reference, and from lyric poetry to local slang, and move between Dylan Thomas and Shakespeare by way of The Boyfriend, encompassing vaudeville and tragedy on the way, let alone end up with a popular and accessible play. In the past Hewett has freely acknow ledged her problems with the structure of her plays, but in The Man from Mukinupin she has solved the structure by an apt borrowing of the tried and true shape of the well made and well worn. Again she has been quoted as saying that in each work she has sought the appropriate form. The Man from Mukinupin in its recreation of an innocent Australia on the edge of experience, is highly suited to the conventional romantic form in which it is cast. By the simple Shakespearean comic device of splitting the play into two parallel worlds and the characters into their alter egos, she is able to not only deal with the extremities of beauty and darkness, which have always attracted her, but also resolve
Photo: David Parker
( Professional)
Chris Orchard (Jack) and Vivien Davies (Polly) ¡n the MTC's Man from Mukinupin.
THEATRE AUSTRALIA APRIL 1981
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