Valley Artists

Date: 20-Jul-07
Author: Valley Artists

HAVE YOU SHOT ANYTHING LATELY?

Well, why not? Valley Artists needs your short films for the Annual Wollombi Valley Short Film Festival.

Remember 24th August is deadline for entries. So get a posse together and get out there and shoot something!

SPONSORS DINNER

14th July, 2007. Invites have been sent out. Please RSVP for catering purposes by 7th July, 2007. Phone 4998 8244

SCHOLARSHIP AWARD

We are pleased to announce that Siobhan Turrell has been awarded a scholarship of up to $500.00 to pursue a course of her choice in the performing arts. Siobhan, who is only sixteen, has been working for Valley Artists for a number of years, both on stage and back stage.A timely award.

Congratulations Siobhan.

FAIR DINKUM PLAY A SUCCESS the headlines cried after The Summer of the Seventeenth Doll opened in 1955 and it still rates as a classic dinki-di Australian play. Some critics consider it a nostalgia piece teetering on melodrama but there was no danger of that in Valley Artists' trim, taut, terrific production of The Doll.

As Jo Stafford wailed You Belong to Me and Giles Tester's pinkstriped, kewpie-strewn, shabby suburban house in Carlton was revealed, (those cutaway wings were a stroke of genius!), the audience was immediately transported; the couple behind me panicking until they found the sixteenth doll! The play opens with Olive, a goodtime girl played by Carmen Buchanan in a debut that proves she's a valuable addition to the Company. She brings this immature, unstable character convincingly to the brink and breaks her with both strength and subtlety.

Accompanied by Kathie 'Bubba' Ryan, (Siobhan Turrell), a gawky, wide-eyed innocent who has witnessed her neighbours' annual outbursts of frivolity, celebration and recreational sex since childhood, Olive twitters about two outback icons who travel south each year during the five-month layoff while Emma, her cynical, arthritic mother, tries to warn her that the high life doesn't last forever. Clare di Natale brought crackling comic relief to this stressful play and despite bordering on pantomime, the audience adored her razor-sharp voice and timing and extraordinary body movements.

An outsider arrives. Pearl, an older barmaid, is inveigled into partnering Roo's mate. Karen Butler Hughes brilliantly transforms herself into a self-righteous, girdled woman in a black frock 'better for leaving corpses in,' her rigid perm topped with an evil little black hat. It is a difficult role and Karen deserves a big bouquet for her performance.

When Olive's 'eagles' come 'flying down out of the sun' they are eagles no more. Roo, once a top cane cutter and his 'eel in a fish basket' mate, Barney, are getting past it, physically and sexually, and Roo's latest gift to Olive signals a red alert for their flagging relationship.

Barney, a loveable loser caught by split loyalties, is expertly played by Ken Barnett but Alan Glover steals the show as Roo. With his rolled-up sleeves, high-waisted trousers and sunsquinted eyes, he's as Aussie as a KB ad and stiff with ageing male pride.When he destroys the blood-red Seventeenth Doll the audience freezes in a shocked collective silence directors die for.

There are plenty of other striking moments: Olive's disillusionment; the sad nudity of the set after the dolls have been removed; a brief but high impact performance by Stephen Pembroke as Roo's younger rival, Johnny Dowd; Siobhan's breathtaking metamorphosis from 'Bubba' to Kathie in a long white dress and her newfound defiance as she prepares to go off with Johnny, but she needs to project a lot more. It's a doll of a production. Director Bob Philippe and his bonzer cast and crew deserved such lusty applause -- and was that Lawler's ghost capering in the wings?

Julie Simpson