Walking Into Bigness. Photo: Pia Johnson.
Hedda Hopper on stage together. There are loads of laughs and a mention of every factoid, rumour and saucy speculation you’ve ever heard about the power quartet. Many of the opening night audience - perhaps even the majority - laugh almost continuously and, at the end, cheer the cast mightily. I am with them about the Ensemble’s excellent team of actors, but this particular Monroe/Davis fan soon grew weary of the constant camp clichés and unbarbed insults. It’s August 1962, the month of the first previews of What Ever Happened To Baby Jane? and the shockingly early death of La Monroe. At Hopper’s ‘Hollywood Babylon’ mansion (a pretend-opulent setting by Anna Gardiner), Davis (Jeanette Cronin) and Crawford (Kate Raisin) fight over top billing while Hedda’s butler/assistant Skip (Eric Beecroft) hides his preposterous intentions. Hedda (Belina Giblin) reveals that she gets her juiciest gossip direct from FBI boss ‘Gay Edgar Hoover’ (“I hope he chokes on his dildo!”). Marilyn (Lizzie Mitchell) joins the party just before the interval. Woozy, popping barbiturates and “cool with queers”, she floats through the second act before drifting to a wretchedly unamusing off-stage end. I have nothing but admiration for these splendid performers who, under the direction of Anna Crawford, bring the legends to recognisable life. It’s a fun night for some. To others it’s a cold-hearted, vastly elongated revue sketch. Frank Hatherley 82 Stage Whispers
Walking into the Bigness By Richard Frankland. Directed by Wayne Blair & Chris Mead. Malthouse Theatre Melbourne. Aug 1 - 23. WALKING into the Bigness recounts stories from the life of Richard Frankland, the indigenous Australian singer -songwriter, poet, filmaker, activist and playwright. While Mr Frankland and fellow musician Monica Weightman sit to the side of the stage providing subtle musical underscore, his stories and songs are brought to life by five actors, who alternately play Mr Frankland himself, or various other people with whom he comes into contact. This approach lends a certain disjointedness to the proceedings, especially during moments of overlapping dialogue. Played out against a strikingly designed, highly evocative set, the stories were intensely personal pieces from a man’s life, encompassing the unusual breadth of Mr Frankland’s experiences, which ranged from his early days as an abbatoir worker to his time as an investigator for the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, only to later abruptly turn to his overseas warzone experiences. Offering a great deal of information for the audience to absorb, the storytelling structure seemed to falter a little in the second half - perhaps it was a case of trying to cover too much ground. The five performers certainly gave their all, delivering high-intensity performances with plenty of energy, but were constrained in their contributions by the structure of the piece, with its focus
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