|
For the creators of the new stage production Pan it's been a ... well, strange journey bringing the fairytale to life. Pan playwright Frank Gauntlett explains.
NEVERLAND: Sunday, May 14: If there is one word that above all others sums up the experience of writing Pan, it would be weird. Nightmarish is a good word and would probably make it to the short list but, all things considered, weird is the way that whole experience has tended to be.
Weird.
It's weird that such a big show has been written by an Australian. It's even weirder that it has been written by me: no agent, no patron, resting newspaper employee, former local theatre critic and, to quote this distinguished organ, "lively figure on Sydney's theatre fringe". (Note to self: must be getting something right.)
Having lived with Pan often rather in the way that one lives with an amputated limb for more than seven years, my vote definitely goes for weird but I'd scatter the preferences about a bit.
Sydney's awesome Capitol Theatre nestling in vibrant, taxi-friendly Chinatown and nanoseconds from ultra-accessible rail, light rail, monorail and bus equipment has become known as Weird Central to me.
Home is a strange little Pan colony in the fair Municipality of Leichhardt, no stranger to weirdness at the best of times .
"You must be @!%&#* joking!" is an uncommonly versatile phrase rarely far from the lips these seven years or more.
It is actually happening. It's opening tonight. This afternoon, in fact. 5pm. At The Capitol Theatre. World Premiere. I wrote it. They've spent a squillion bucks! It is not a musical. It is huge fun, the biggest, most complicated, romantic, adventurous, weirdest experience in Australian theatre history.
I think I'll go to the bathroom.
One day the full story will be told but, ah well, needs must when the mortgage drives.
The cast is huge and relentlessly wonderful! I love them all. Phillip Quast is a hilariously demented Hook, Troy Woodcroft soars as the most marvellous Peter, Raelee Hill is perfect as Wendy and there's legendary Bill Kerr as JM Battle, Stuart Wagstaff, Daniel Mitchell, Terry Bader, Nell Young, Jenny Vuletic, Russell Newman and a seemingly endless supply of mates in on the gig.
Director John Banas, Jim Henson's Creature Workshop, lighting wonder Jenny Kagan and several hundred others have worked, and are working, miracles.
There are posters everywhere! It's on TV!
It will all be my fault.
The last show I did, about six months ago, was called Punch And Judy. It had a budget leaving precious little change out of 300 bucks! It was terrific even if I do say so myself but the undeniably fantastical contrast with Pan is not only undeniable but undeniably fantastical, to say nothing of weird.
It all started with a mysterious phone call seven years ago.
Then came another call, from theatrical producers Kerry and Elyse Jewel. Over dinner they outlined plans for a beautiful and spectacular Australian production based on JM Barrie's classic bitter-sweet adventures of Peter Pan, Captain Hook, Wendy Darling and the rest.
They made me an offer I couldn't refuse: they paid for dinner.
I started reading about JM Barrie and NeverLand and writing the first draft. It was a thoroughly delightful experience that culminated in long-suffering partner Jenny Brown and me performing the whole show minus the flying to Kerry and Elyse one night in the lounge room.
Shortly after this, things got seriously weird. We had a prototype tryout in Perth and an attempted tryout in Melbourne. Forgive me if I just don't go there right now. Some things are just too painful.
Perth had many problems and the numerous fit and fun-loving young pirates and Lost Boys and a few older incorrigibles stormed into the opening night party venue with limited goals to occupy their released, voracious and testosterone-crazed minds.
Of space there was plenty, there were throbbing lights, there was food and horny music and enough grog to sink the US Navy but I don't think there were more than nine females in that multitude who could walk without an appliance.
It was, to be fair, strongly rumoured that several male guests had died of decrepitude during the interval and their companions hadn't caught on yet.
Not many people really clicked that night unless it was the result of a bone disorder.
How can I forget HIM? He had been introduced as some kind of moneybags. He'd made a motza growing something in the ground and possibly poisoning wells and flour as a sideline. His tungsten-dipped wife could freeze good vodka at a glance.
At the opening night party he loomed with a batch of rented cleavage and whined at great length about a need for greater exposure of actors' bottoms. I took refuge in beverages and awoke to find that the local media thought a Peter Pan for our times should include graphic indecent assault.
Perth is not my favourite spot on God's earth.
The Melbourne limb of that experience came as a blur of interminable and hysterical phone calls. The call that drew the curtain, however, was brief and calm. It was from our then director, Sarah, who is a mate and had been basically dropped in it from a great height by self and D Mitchell.
Sarah explained that the entire company was in the pub, that I would not, in fact, wish to be there and that, even as we spoke, burly men were leaving the theatre with lighting equipment. Shortly thereafter it all went quiet. Too quiet.
I blush to confess it now, but the profoundly unexpected news of the Creature Workshop's subsequent interest in Pan very nearly sent me into unmanly raptures
.
And the whole thing came back to life. Really interesting people started to drift into its gravitational pull and it flourished. John Banas, who I knew and liked, got to drive. And it flourished even more.
Your correspondent was feeling pretty damned tasty a few weeks back and then came the news that Kerry had been sacked. I think I said something like: "You must be @)% &#* joking!"
People in suits are sorting this matter out. What can I say? That's business. We're show. I haven 't seen so many lawyers in years but the show, in a world of its own, is terrific. I love it. Can't keep away. Of course, I would say that.
There are probably a few Sun-Herald readers out there sifting through these prose Polaroids of Pan and thinking: "So what's different? All live theatre is weird and scary, no matter how big or how new."
Fair point.
What I think is different about the show has little to do with bigness or newness but a lot to do with live-ness and theatre.
I was sitting in the Capitol one night after the first run-through of Act One. It has gone extremely well but was a harrowing and exhausting experience for everyone concerned. The pub beckoned.
On stage Phillip Quast, with an injured foot, was going over and over the gruelling, duelling Skull Rock sequence with actor and fight director Kyle Rowling. It was a picture of extraordinary ability and absolute commitment.
I crept out pubwards as they fought on, thinking about the amazing detail that Banas had demanded on this huge canvas, how he had shaped amazing technology and talent to produce something touching, human, deeply resonant, magical, beautiful and fun!
Too many people think that theatre must be like intellectual dentistry painful and to be endured. Sometimes it is like that, but it doesn't have to be so.
Preview audiences have been rapt but the fantastical journey continues. Who knows what will happen after 5pm? I'm just going to the bathroom again but stay tuned for the next gripping but probably weird instalment!
© Fairfax Digital
