Cate et le théâtre!

J'ai trouvé des articles sur Cate et ses débuts au théâtre
Ce serait bien de les mettre, et vu qu'on est un site français de les traduire non ?

Pour la pièce Kafka dances

KAFKA DANCES by Timothy Daly

Citation :

Reviewer: James Waites.

Timothy Daly's play Kafka Dances premiered in 1993 at the Stables Theatre in Kings Cross, so there's an underpinning of triumph in this rhapsody on a literary theme even being invited to play a season at The Wharf.

The play was well-received the first time around. That there are few radical changes - it's the same cast, crew and essentially the same production, I am told - suggests the play underwent some excellent preparation then. Daly's play is not particularly out of the ordinary, except to the extent that a nice dramatic idea has, for once, been thoroughly worked through. It's all of a piece - inventive, pleasurable, and neat - and, unlike so many new Australian plays, the dramaturgical input of director Ros Horin and dramaturg Keith Gallasch has been all for the good.

It's a play that comes from Daly's reading of Kafka's letters to Felice Bauer, the woman to whom he was engaged twice but never married, to whom he wrote many manic, passionate, intelligent letters, but met only half a dozen times.

Thankfully, it's also a play that leaves the world of bizzare fact hunting behind for one closer to spiritual search: it uses fragments of one artist's life story to expostulate on a parcel of themes to do with the struggle by any artist to stick with his or her own emerging version of "the truth".

What's most pleasing about this production is its modest, yet effective, theatricality. Kafka's inner world, for example, is presented as a form of Yiddish dream theatre where the family members, in a spirit of amateurish fun, serve as inner voices, challenging the writer to try and overcome some of his more extreme personal defects. With the prospect of marrying a beautiful woman, he does try to work on those skills deemed necessary for a good performance on the that stage called life, but to little avail, and the dream sequences inevitably take on that idiosyncratic form of private terror for which the great Prague-born writer is renowned.

This is a well cast production, with Ron Falk and Jane Harders, as the Jewish parents, pushing their well-honed thespian skills to a Blackadder edge in the dream sequences, and Anna Broinowski's threateningly dark sister artfully balancing all that is innocent and light in Cate Blanchett's Felice. A 1992 NIDA graduate, Blanchett has already been recognised as an actor of particular promise, and here she gracefully forges her claim further.

But the night goes, as it should, to Lech Mackiewicz's Franz Kafka. This gifted graduate from one of Poland's leading theatre schools shares Kafka's dark European looks, and the nervous stutter and tubercular cough appear easy; but what's really special is the credibility with which Mackiewicz maps out the pain and struggle of an artist attempting to overcome personal shortcomings and a hostile environment to make his or her life's work.

The premise may well be rather old fashioned - artist as misunderstood genius - but in this actor's hands it's been honed down to sculpture, originality, a work of art.

The lights come on in the ever-so-sensitive face of this Kafka every time a new hope dawns, only to be dashed again in the darkness of broken dreams so poetically recorded in Kafka's own work.

Finally, credit must also go to Ros Horin who, as the artistic director of the Griffin Theatre, not only saw the potential of this play, but has since worked it up to the level at which it can enjoy mainstream success.

The Australian, Friday June 17th, 1994.

Oleanna

Citation :

HORROR COMES TO UPOTIA
REVIEWER: Angela Bennie.

David Mamet's Oleanna at the Wharf Studio will set your blood racing. It will grip you hard and shake you about until the bones in your body rattle and every fibre of your decency you thought you had crumbles.

Most of its impact comes from Mamet's extraordinary dramatic writing skills, his understanding of dramatic conflict (which has nothing to do with ideas being in conflict and everything to do with human beings being so) and his hard-nosed ability to find a sore on society's delicate, protective skin and dig at it until it bleeds.

But it also comes from Michael Gow's relentless, near-hysterical production of it: from the moment the loud, pompous entr'acte begins, to Cate Blanchett's last panting, beaten gasp, Oleanna is an unstoppable roller-coaster ride to horror.

Not horror in the Hollywood-movie sense; horror in some other deep, moral sense, the kind that accompanies the realisation that it has all come to this, that we have all come to this.

"This" is something quite specific in Oleanna and it begins with Mamet's plot: Carol, a student in education, brings a charge of sexual harassment against her professor, who, as a consequence, loses his job, his house and possibly his family. He is virtually destroyed.

When he discovers the charge has escalated to one of rape at the urging of Carol's "Group" (one presumes these are her hardline politically correct feminist friends, although it is never spelt out), he loses control, attacks her violently, punching, kicking her, yelling "Rape you..I wouldn't touch you with a 10-foot pole, you little cunt." The play ends with the two looking at each other across an enormous abyss.

The "this" is unsettled a little by the brilliance and passion with which Mamet seems to put both sides of the situation, pulling his audience with him one way and then the other. His arguments about education and a teacher's responsibility towards his or her pupil are complex and brought beautifully to bear within the fabric of the work itself. More than this, his plays work like a brief, passionate plea for the intellectual freedom - the title, Oleanna, comes from the name of a song dedicated to the creation of Utopia.

But the intellectual freedom and Mamet's scintillating theatrical games fade into insignificance when one considers the ending. There is something primeval about it, visceral.

Nor does it come from nowhere, it is there, building its way up to the play's surface a;; through the action, until it explodes through into the final moments. And looking down through the fissure, it is possible to glimpse something awful at work in Oleanna, something akin to hatred. It is enough to make your blood curdle.

Is this what we have come to?

If Gow's production answers the question, then it is in the affirmative. There is an aggressive thrust in its energy and phrasing, its pace is urgent. This is necessary for Mamet's theatrical tricks to work, and Gow pushes and pulls the pulleys like a master. His final moment of having John move back behind the huge desk, surrounded by books, to stand looking down at the cowering woman makes the heart pound with its power as an image.

But what is more revealing is this production's attitude to its two characters.

Geoffrey Rush is dynamic as the pompous, patronising, opinionated fop of a teacher, John. But he is also revealed as capable of compassion and care, despite his dreadful self-interest and self concern. He is an individual, a human being with failings, but a human being nevertheless. He is representative of the individual, the member of the status-quo - albeit, and this is significant, too, an elite member of that status quo.

Blanchett as Carol is equally dynamic; she gives a brilliant and sustained, almost frightening, performance. But her brilliance reminds one of a diamond on the edge of a drill; and there is in her rendition of Carol a kind of fanaticism that is mindless, blind, like something inhuman.

And even when Blanchett, good actor that she is, does give her Carol every human quality she can find to give her a human shape, like vulnerability and passion, for example, the writing and direction is against her.

Her role in the play is to be the representative of the Other, the outsider, the Group or collective against the struggling individual; she is the mind-less as opposed to the thought-ful, she is a representative of those who try to change the status quo, who demand space and validity for their agenda - and on ad infinitum, the list is by now very familiar.

In Oleanna the symbol of that subversion is a woman. And in Oleanna, it is male violence alone that beats her into submission.

Welcome to Utopia!

The Sydney Morning Herald, Friday, September 10th, 1993.

THE TEMPEST

Citation :

Review: Stewart Hawkins

The Tempest, Shakespeare's last work, is a tale of magic and mystery, wrongs being righted, and morality and justice winning out in the end. Neil Armfield, who won considerable acclaim for his production of Hamlet last year, has again come up with a simply stunning interpretation of the Bard, combining simplicity of design with complex, contemporary political and emotional overtones.

In a courageous move, Armfield has cast Aboriginal actor Kevin Smith as the character Caliban, and has deliberately loaded the work with the politics of Australian colonialism - something the Elizabethan author could obviously have known nothing about.

But because of the sensitivity of the direction, Armfield's purpose is executed well and, although the condition of the much-abused Caliban does not override some of the more intricate intentions of the piece, his plight does become a more integral issue in the play.

The Tempest works in layers as the magician Prospero, using his magic powers, tries to orchestrate fate - not only to see his innocent and protected daughter right in the matters of love but also to regain his usurped position in matters of state.

Barry Otto was a commanding (but at times vulnerable) presence as Prospero - strong, almost harsh, when it came to directing his minion Ariel (Gillian Jones) but compassionate and gentle with his daughter Miranda (Cate Blanchett).

Blanchett puts in a terrific performance - her ethereal beauty and her characterisation of a woman denied contact with the outside world, gazing in wonder at such "beauteous creatures" (men) gives her a splendid stage presence.

Smith's Caliban is also a wonderful performance.
He is desperate to regain his island but innocent enough to be duped by the drunken revelers who would be kings of their own pocket of territory. Armfield has highlighted the comedy in this piece without losing the mysticism and magic which is cued by the use of simple electric lights and music.

And he has retained the dignity of the characters marooned on the island despite their rough and ready appearance - Areil is a soiled angel, a nymph of the subways rather than of the woods, and Miranda must carry her beauty through her rags.

What it adds up to is one of the gentlest and most sensitive of this work that I have seen.
Nothing is rammed down the audience's throat but no layer is left uncovered. Sensuous and delightful, this is a very special play.

The Daily Telegraph Mirror, Friday June 2nd, 1995.

Ouaw, ce qu'ils disent de Cate donne vraiment plus qu'envie de la voir sur les planches

ah oui c'est sur !

est ce qu'on met ça sur le site, vu qu'on n'a pas énormément de choses ( par rapport à ce que Cate a pu faire au théatre) sur le théatre et cate ? Je veux bien essayer de traduire si vous voulez .

THE TEMPEST by William Shakespeare

Citation :

Belvoir Street Theatre.
Review: Carrie Kablean.

Amid a chaotic shipwreck, with passengers cast adrift, Prospero, usurped Duke of Milan and now magician-ruler of his isle of exile, calmly bestirs a tempest in a tin tub, a final powerful spell to unite past wrongs and bring love and reconciliation.
It's a promising start to Neil Armfield's production of The Tempest, first staged at Belvoir Street in 1990, and rightly praised for its original and fresh look at the Bard's last play.

However, the production is not without its problems. For all the vividness of the storm scene I found, from my vantage point in the back row, the voices were swallowed up in the turmoil. Things improved slightly when the aircon moved down a gear but it wasn't the only time diction was inadequate - perhaps the sand-strewn stage absorbs sound.

Brian Thomson's set, together with excellent lighting, provide some magical backdrops and there are some fine performances.
My strongest impression is that made by Caliban, played by Kevin Smith.

This "hag-born" man monster was once the ruler and sole custodian of this isle, and Smith imbues him with a kind of desperate dignity even as he is reviled and enslaved by Prospero, and later plied with drink by the winesoaked butler Stephano and jester Trinculo.

Cate Blanchett has a translucent quality which was well suited to her portrayal of the unwordly, 15-year old Miranda, whose awakening to love at first sight of that "wondrous creature" Ferdinand, the King of Naples' son, and a life outside her tiny island, is touching and humorous in its childlike simplicity.

Not as simplistic is Barry Otto's Prospero, who would, in today's parlance, be labeled a control freak. Here is a man who has been usurped of his dukedom, exiled by his own brother, who has his daughter and Caliban in his direct power, who has pressed the sprite Ariel (Gillian Jones, not looking at all androgynous) into reluctant service, and has the ability to conjure up storms to bring his enemies to his door.

Yet Otto's Prospero is a little remote. There was no thunderous rage and the portrayal of quiet retribution seemed rather subdued. Perhaps this is why his brother Antonio - who, as played by David Roberts, seemed to lack a core of malevolence - could usurp him so easily?

But Otto's subtle performance was most moving towards the end of the play when Prospero sets his charges free.
As for Stephano (Keith Robinson) and Trinculo (Jacek Koman), they are very fine drunks indeed and very funny - at first. The problem is that like most drunks, one soon tires of them.

This is Belvoir Street's 10th anniversary and the inaugural 1995 for Company B. Although I found aspects of the first -night show disappointing, I suspect, given the calibre of the whole team, the subsequent performances will have improved enormously.

Sunday Telegraph, June 4th, 1995

THE TEMPEST

Citation :

Review: James Waites.

The Launch of Neil Armfield's Belvoir-based Company B is undoubtedly a historic occasion. The circumstances that have lead to the moment go back as far as the early 1970s renaissance in our performing arts, including the establishment of the original Nimrod Theatre and its move to the Surrey Hills space which now houses the new company. Equally, Armfield's own achievement as a director owes much to opportunities the Nimrod company offered him at an young age, and further lessons were drawn from his association with Jim Sharman's Adelaide-based acting ensemble, Lighthouse.

The truth is we have been waiting a long time for a company of this nature to be formed in Sydney. Armfield is the right person to do it, and Belvoir the ideal location. It is interesting that Armfield chose to rework one of his most successful productions, his 1990 The Tempest, to launch the company. The decision to avoid unnecessary risk (and thus box-office and public relations catastrophes) is also a lesson learned from the past. The whole mood of the launch, with its strong government and private sector back-up, also suggests that the city might actually be ready to support such an endeavour.

Only three actors return to the production - Ralph Cotterill (Gonzalo), Gillian Jones (Ariel) and Keith Robinson (Stephano). All produced excellent performances the first time round: this time Jones and Robinson take their interpretations to even greater heights.

While the overall design concept remains the same (Brian Thomson's setting, Jennie Tate's costumes, Alan John's score), the results are otherwise very different. John Bell's Prospero was an unforgettably classical interpretation, astringently heroic and impeccably articulated. Barry Otto's is a more idiosyncratic reading, trembling, doubting, over-reaching in his love of his daughter and sick with yearning for resolution of the long rift that has scarred relations with his brother, the usurping Antonio. We may miss a little of the all-controlling Magus in this characterisation, and the eventual confrontation with Antonio goes off with a whimper, but in return we are rewarded with many fresh insights. The humanity is profound.

One of the highlights of the original production was Max Cullen's Caliaban, his tragic moon-calf, deformed of intellect more than body, dragging forward a raft of new insights into the play. How amazing it is that in casting Aboriginal actor Kevin Smith in the part, we are rewarded all over again with another entirely new, and perhaps even more fascinating, perspective. The Tempest is, among other themes, a play about colonialism and the New World. To cast the only true tenant of the island as an Aborigine brings this 400-year old play right to our shore. To see him fooled by Stephano's culturally acquired pretensions (not to mention succumbing to his drink) is tragically resonant.

There are other remarkable aspects of Armfield's most assured reading. The often tiresome second plotline, the conspiratorial attempt of Alonso (David Wendham) and Sebastian (David Roberts) to murder Antonio while he sleeps is, instead of being rushed over in embarrassment, played out in meticulous detail, almost in slow motion. The attention given this scene brings it far enough forward for the whole play, for once, to make sense. But the one can go too far: the scene was stretched so far on opening night audience that concentration almost collapsed.

Another remarkable aspect of this production is the comic line supplied by the antics of Trinculo (Jacek Koman) and Stephano. After the devastating brutality of Koman's most recent roles (Roy Cohn in Angels In America and Claudius in Armfield's Hamlet), he reveals that his comic skills are equally great. Trinculo is described by Shakespeare as a jester, and Koman takes this as a cue. A hint of Roy Rene in the look adds another uniquely Australian edge. Robinson's Stephano is a tour-de-force, one which begs the question: when will this actor be lifted beyond the bridesmaid roles? But he, too, must learn to sense when enough is enough. Towards the closing scenes, there was a feeling that Robinson was pushing his comic luck a little too far.

Which brings us to the lovers, Miranda and Ferdinand. Cate Blanchett is a most beautiful young woman who also happens to be able to act. Her partner in romance for the evening is Jason Clarke, a recent Victorian College of the Arts. Clarke makes a most credible debut, and the two work excellently together.

This is a review that concentrates on details, but that is the way the production comes across. There is no doubt that Armfield continues to grow as a director, his bold shaping of this new version of The Tempest shows this to be true. But the impressive elements that make up the production also need to fall into line behind an overall scheme. That, of course, may only take a couple more run-throughs.

To all those with an interest in Shakespeare, or indeed the theatre in general, here we have a very remarkable production launching a most exciting epoch of Australian theatre. Definitely worth the price of a ticket.

The Sydney Morning Herald, Thursday June 1st, 1995.


PRODUCTION DETAILS
VENUE: Belvoir Street Theatre, Surrey Hills, Sydney.
PREVIEWS: May 26th, 27th & 28th.
OPENED: May 30th.
CLOSED: June 2nd.
PERFORMANCES: 35.

DIRECTOR: Neil Armfield; SET DESIGN: Bryan Thomson; COSTUMES: Jeannie Tate; LIGHTING: Mark Shelton; MUSIC: Alan John.

CAST (alphabetical): Cate Blanchett, Peter Carrol, Jason Clarke, Desmond Connellan, Ralph Cotterill, Gillian Jones, Jacek, Koman, Barry Otto, David Roberts, Keith Robinson, Kevin Smith & David Wendham.

OMG! Là je suis perdue...

c'est pour ça que je propose de traduire du mieux que je pourrais

Citation :

The Blind Giant Is Dancing
Reviewer: John McCallum.
"The world is a perfect reflection of the human heart." This profoundly gloomy thought, given the state of the world, is constantly questioned but never really challenged by the presence in Stephen Sewell's plays of a few sudden gleams of hope and love, always already defeated when they emerge.

His characters only ever speak of their love for each other in urgent cries of pain at the end of long scenes of bitter powerstruggles, recrimination and despair.
It is not a love that we can feel for or empathise with in his theatre, but somehow it is needed if we are to understand how our personal and public lives go together.

The Blind Giant Is Dancing is a dramatic exploration of how as individuals we make the world and the world makes us. Public crimes are reflections of private evils, evils produced by having to live in a world of public crimes. In pursuing this endless cycle, Sewell sometimes seems to be on a spiritual quest to find some redemption in the tiny but palpable fact of existence of impotent hope in all our hearts.

The play, which was first produced in 1983, is completely over the top in an utterly compelling way. The pace increases breathlessly as the action develops. The scenes become shorter and shorter as its unwieldy and rushed narrative races towards apocalypse.

Sewell's writing starts at the point when most plays reach their climax and then builds. Nothing is left unsaid, there is no subtlety or subtext, no argument is allowed to peter out with things unstated. This effect still operates in this pared down version (still three and a half hours) of the original. Sewell writes with a raw passion and deep seriousness rare in Australian drama.

This play comes from his first great "epic" period, when no stage or cast seemed large enough to contain the scope of his neurotic anguish. His plays then were epic, not in the sense of being about armies and long sweeps of time, but in the modern Brechtian sense of being about people's private lives placed firmly in history.

Try to concentrate this intensity into a little two-hander like the chamber-piece recently produced in Sydney, Miranda, and the effect is simply too much. Give it space to breathe and roam about the stage and, in spite of its occasional strained self consciousness, the effect is stunning.

Large plays such as this need large productions, with acting that stretches itself. Neil Armfield's fine ensemble, Company B, is well up to the difficult task of making this huge play work. I don't know how he does it, but I think it is called giving the actors room to move. Armfield productions have a distinctive feel about them, yet they remain actor's shows. Sometimes the actors seem scarcely to be aware of what they are doing, at least on opening nights, but whatever it is, we sit there wanting them to keep on doing it.

The staging and the music are simple, industrial and austere. It is in the performances that the power of this production is generated.
Hugo Weaving is terrific as Allen Fitzgerald, the idealist driven by a passion he does not understand and finally rejects, who makes a Faustian pact with the marvellous Cate Balnchett's Rose Draper. Their relationship, almost surrealistically external to the grubby political story of the play, is in fact at its centre. It is finally reincorporated in the action in a way that makes the surreal pervade the everyday world of the play's particularly bitter version of Realpolitik.

Rose seduces Allen, personally and politically, in order to test his purity, and her eventual triumph is completely hollow. "I hoped you'd win," she says just before the end.

Weaving's Allen starts out at the beginning of the show already deeply and rather frighteningly disturbed. His road to corrupt public power is prefigured in his tense opening privet scenes with Catherine McClements, excellent as Louise, his wife. The personal origins of his final failure of hope and idealism are pursued in a series of vulnerable encounters with his family - the only scenes in which we feel the emotion of the whole farrago of guilt, disillusion and betrayal.

This is an ensemble that performs superbly and, apart from Weaving, Blanchett and McClements, there are several other performances that stand out. Peter Carroll and Kerry Walker, as Allen's parents, seem to have wandered in from another play, so real and human are they in the comic barbeque scene, that opens Act 2. Jacek Koman is very good as Ramon, virtually the only conventionally honest character; and Jason Clarke, although the script gives him less to do until the end, succeeds well as Allen's brother Bruce.

Finally, however, it is the company. Armfield points out in the program the intersection between this play's theme and this company's structure: that people together are stronger than when they are alone. It is wonderful to welcome again, after Hamlet and The Tempest, a great new company that puts its convictions on the line, and lets its industrial work reflect its artistic and intellectual passion.

The Australian, Friday, August 18th, 1995.

Je poste tout ce que j'ai trouvé pour ne pas les perdre

THE BLIND GIANT IS DANCING by Stephen Sewell

Citation :

Looking back in angst at the avaricious '80s

Belvoir Street Theatre
Reviewer: Stewart Hawkins.
Stephen Sewell's The Blind Giant Is Dancing is a play about power, corruption, sex and politics set in the heady days of Australia in the early 1980s.
It was a time when the trade unions still had considerable influence on the Labour Party and the dream of the socialist left still seemed a viable alternative to the inequalities imposed by capitalism.

The play is nothing short of a masterwork, a finely-wrought piece which features personal angst and the big-picture issues, that so much drama created n the '90s seems to ignore.
Sewell's portrait of Australia in the '80s is bleak and pessimistic and the question we are forced to ask ourselves is: has anything changed?

Hugo Weaving plays Allen Fitzgerald, a socialist economist and union heavy, who not only has to come to terms with the morality of politics - a contradiction in terms - but also a personal struggle influenced by guilt and complex feelings toward his Jewish wife (Catherine McClements) and domineering, working-class father (Peter Carroll).
His brother Bruce (Jason Clarke) is a steelworker and one of the "Oppressed" Allen claims to be representing in the corridors of power.

Enter into the melee Rose Draper (Cate Blanchett), a beautiful financial journalist obsessed with power and powerful men - the result is dynamite.

The piece plays with the notion of freedom and the inevitable corrupting influence of power. It also questions whether honest labour is not an euphemism for slavery.
A production this engaging and exciting is rare, particularly with a cast so uniformly terrific.

Weaving takes control of the stage masterfully and Blanchett is sultry, sexy and seductive, providing an irresistible force which accelerates Allen on his road to moral destruction.
Simply and courageously designed, and incorporating a nostalgic soundtrack with numbers by Blondie and The Beatles, this production not only captures an era of Australian history, it also reflects the coming of age of politics in this country.

After disappointing productions of his trite and dull Gardens Of Granddaughters and the weakly structured Miranda, The Blind Giant Is Dancing - written about a decade ago - proves why Sewell is regarded as one of Australia's greatest playwrights.

Details:
WRITER: Stephen Sewell; DIRECTOR: Neil Armfield; SET DESIGNER: Stephen Curtis; COSTUME DESIGNER: Edie Kurzer; LIGHTING: Mark Shelton; MUSIC: Paul Charlier.

CAST: Cate Blanchett, Peter Carroll, Jason Clarke, Ralph Cotterill, Gillian Jones, Russell Keifel, Jacek Koman, Catherine McClements, Keith Robinson, Steve Rodgers, Kerry Walker & Hugo Weaving.
Belvoir Street Theatre. Company B Production.
PREVIEWS: August 12th & 13th.
OPENED: August 15th
CLOSED: SEPTEMBER 10th.
PERFORMANCES: 35.

The Daily Telegraph Mirror, Friday, August 18th, 1995.

"Blanchett is a most beautiful young woman who also happens to be able to act." Ben quin

Oh oui, si tu veux Erin! C'est vrai que ça pourrait être intéressant d'avoir un petit résumé des différentes pièces qu'elle a fait... Ne traduis pas tout peut-être, juste les parties les plus intéressantes, non? Je ne veux pas que tu t'acharnes au travail

HAMLET

Citation :

Here is 'Hamlet', plain and simple
Reviewer: Steven Carroll

'Hamlet' has different meanings for different ages. For Coleridge and the Romantics the prince was the elevated dreamy poet, for many 30s and 40s critics his procrastination was synonymous with appeasement. To a Marxist the play reflects the turn of the dialectical screw - someone caught in the fragmentary world of humanist individualism longing for the security of the old world of mediaeval patriarchy.

In Neil Armfield's version, the imagery is suggestive of a crumbling European republic; the costumes a mixture of the 19th and 20th centuries.

The set appears to be a crypt - grey walls, wilting flowers of remembrance; very minimalist. All of which matches the mainly restrained approach.

This is a plain speaking 'Hamlet', one which for the most part makes for intimate, immediate Shakespeare. But one that with the more lyrical lines can appear like flat acting.

Of course, its the title role that determines the play's success and Richard Roxbrugh's prince holds things together. Armfield's notes refer to Hamlet as a method actor finding his way, and Roxbrugh's approach seems to reflect this.

The angst and the anger in the performance gradually build as Hamlet rumbles in and about the chaos of his upturned world. It's an uncluttered performance: clean lines; simple delivery; Beckettesque and, in this sense, impersonal. No Coleridgean melancholy here, and perhaps there should have been because I didn't sense the longing and sadness of Hamlet's performance. This was especially true of "To be or not to be", which was too low key and prosaic.

But it's a strong performance and the Belvoir Street troupe - some unevenness aside - is tightly knit. Geoffrey Rush's moving and well judged Horatio is as much an observer as a participant in the action; Peter Carroll's old school Polonius almost threatens to steal the show; and Jacek Koman's Claudius has the menace of a despot about him.

Cate Blanchett's Ophelia is emotionally charged but superbly controlled acting.

'Hamlet' is no easy ask, but this production is definitely worth seeing. If the opening is flat, some scenes - such as Hamlet's confrontation with Gertrude (poignantly played by Gillian Jones) - really take off.

The Sunday Age, September 24th , 1995.

Je m'oriente vers le cinéma mais j'étudie l'anglais et je compte choisir le parcours traduction. Et pourquoi pas faire traducteur-soustitreur, pour arrondir les fins de mois de critique (si j'y arrive ) Et j'aime beaucoup traduire
je sais je pense à beaucoup de trucs

HAMLET

Citation :

Princely Performance
Reviewer: Bryce Hallet

By including the Company B Belvoir's Hamlet in its 1995 subscription season, Melbourne Theatre Company has given its audience such a rich and rewarding experience that many recent local offerings pale by comparison.

Director Neil Armfield and his ensemble have crafted a sharply observed contemporary production that taps into all kinds of unhinged behavioral traits to form a spare, near-seamless and enthralling Hamlet. It is awake to the text's comic potential as well as its murky follies.

Moments of truth, agony and pain are exposed in harsh, glaring industrial light, while shadows, flickering lights and dark voids at the edges heighten the play's tone of suspicion, fear and loss.

Armfield adds some superb comic flourishes to accentuate the poisons trickling blow the play's surface. In the interplay of characters he sets in motion a delicately controlled chain of events in which characters, be they weak or strong, are, in effect, out of control.

A number of dramatically charged scenes, irrespective of how familiar they might already be, are made astonishingly vivid by the serene, stolid presense of Geoffrey Rush's Horatio; a moral linchpin in a world gone mad and an eyewitness, like the audience, to uncontrollable, terrifying acts.

Cate Blanchett's "mad" scene is mesmerising for its earthiness; this is not a tragic Ophelia but one of potent sexuality and uncoiling passion. Peter Carroll's superb Polonius is a comically willful conspirator and gossip, while Russsel Keifel (Guildenstern) are inept, naïve and tentative bunglers who would be perfectly at home in a British sitcom.

Richard Roxbrugh's Hamlet, for all the self-conscious idiocy, posturing and deliberations, invests the character with a confused, vulnerable humanity, powering along with natural, fully believable instinct in a world of deceit and theatrical illusion.

The production has great sense and purpose is what is an enduringly insightful, deeply resonant play.

The Australian, September 27th, 1995.

HAMLET

Citation :

Fine production sparks fresh fire
Reviewer: Helen Thomson.

Fine performances draw fresh ideas from even the most well-known soliloquies and Hamlet is absorbing through all of the four hours.

Hamlet is a marathon for actors and audience, almost four hours of playing time during which some of Shakespeare's most profound ideas and most complex charcacterisations fill the stage. This Belvoir production, directed by Neil Armfield, is absorbing and rewarding for all of that time. It skillfully re-animates the pulse with a rhythmic ebb and flow of emotional intensity that owes much to the emphasis on ensemble acting.

Richard Roxburgh is a first-rate Hamlet - intelligent, engaging, quizzical and impassioned by turn - but his character is defined in relation to a group of distinctly delineated characters who gradually weave a web of intrigue to enmesh him. Roxburgh gives an almost transparently open reading of Hamlet; his is a tortured soul, but not in an especially metaphysical sense.

Two ideas are emphasised in this production. It dramatises the corruption inherent in any political group with huge discrepancies in power, and it plays upon the paradoxes of performance in many ways. Peter Carroll's Polonius has the suavity of a career sycophant, but also a cold-blooded will to power over his children, which mimics that of the king. His is one splendid performance among many.

As Claudius, Jacek Koman began with a sinisterly comic rendering of a man reassuring himself of his power by orchestrating laughter among his followers. His subsequent growing desperation was curiously chilly and limited in emotional range. His relationship with Gertrude, played by an elegant Gillian Jones, was almost sexless. Unsurprisingly, there was little sense of Hamlet's sexual distaste fueling his revenge.

It's left to the player king to demonstrate kingliness, teaching Hamlet the lesson that passion feigned in performance can exceed the real thing. Neil Armfield has used Horatio, played with enormous sympathy and presence by Geoffrey Rush, to suggest that Hamlet, too, is a player king. His soliloquies are subtly changed in emphasis by Horatio's presence, unseen by Hamlet but not the audience.

Horatio's presence, shadowing most of the action, and his final words opening the play as well as ending it, also act as a reminder that we are watching a play within which are characters trying out roles and plots on each other, with tragic results. Only Hamlet is attempting to sift through to the truth of his own character, and trying to act from examined and tested motives.

Richard Roxburgh's clear and unforced diction, the sense he conveys in even the best-known of soliloquies, that the ideas are new and in process of being worked out, gives a welcome freshness and immediacy to the play's speculations.

It is in fact the naturalness of his hamlet that proves the test of honesty in the other characters. When they are all, one by one, revealed to be role playing and therefore unnatural and immoral. Hamlet's indecisiveness seems less weakness than strength of character.

Cate Blanchett as Ophelia gives a suggestive performance of considerable subtlety. Her mad scene is one of the gradually escalating points of emotional catharsis, culminating in the final carnage when Hamlet dies in the arms of an anguished, sobbing Horatio.

The stark set, little more than a wall of smudged and neglected tombs arrogantly defaced with a poster of Claudius as triumphant king, not only acts as a constant reminder of death, but is a fitting frame for the charnel house conclusion and Fortinbras' final words announcing the public display of the bodies.

There is a coherence and intelligence to this production which throws up, as all really first-class productions do, new ideas and readings of a well-known classic. We come away from it with a sense that Shakespeare had a political as well as psychological and moral point to make, as its fine performances draw us right into the heart of its tragic feeling.

The Age, 21st September, 1995

J'ai une amie qui voudrait aussi sous-titrer les films... Ca peut être intéressant oui ! Enfin, il faut avoir une bonne oreille ...

Cate a aussi joué dans THE VAGINA MONOLOGUES et je sais qu'il y a des photos sr le net . J'en ai en HQ (il me semble) même mais elles sont créditées

PLENTY:

Citation :

Oscar-nominated actress Cate Blanchett made her West End stage debut on Tuesday night in a revival of David Hare's play Plenty at London's Albery Theatre.
Her performance received good reviews with one critic praising her "extraordinary force, grace and passion".

The Australian actress has followed a host of screen stars onto the London stage, including her fellow countrywoman Nicole Kidman. Although Blanchett is more famous for her role as the young Queen Elizabeth in Shekhar Kapur's film Elizabeth, she is no stranger to the theatre - in her native Australia she is an experienced stage actress.

In Plenty Blanchett plays Susan Traherne, a former special agent in wartime France who becomes disillusioned in post-war Britain. Julian Wadham stars as her husband Raymond Brock and Burt Kwouk as a diplomat.

Glowing reviews

"Miss Blanchett hits exactly the right sound of despair, rhetoric and self-dramatisation. She is a marvel, and a revelation."
Daily Mail

"The evening will be remembered for Blanchett, who seizes the play by the scruff of the neck and often succedds in shaking it to life. Pencil thin and often wonderfully glamorous, she ranges from cool irony to raging fury, and in her rare moments of tenderness she seems to glow from within."
Daily Telegraph

"Svelte and assured, bitter and brassy, crazily aggressive and... oddly vulnerable; Blanchett gives us the lot."
The Times

But not all critics admired Blanchett's interpretation of the role. The Guardian calls her performance,"so frenziedly neurotic as almost to forfeit one's sympathy."

BBC NEWS

Oh zut, elles sont créditées Moi je n'ai vu que des petites photos et encore c'était des scans de magazines

J'ai entendu parler de cette pièce (en français...désolée) par des amies qui l'ont vu à Paris...
Il paraît que c'est drôle comme tout!

c'est pénible ces crédits
après tout ce n'est pas eux qui ont pris les clichés !

PLENTY

Citation :

BLANCHETT'S HOTLINE TO THE HEART.
by Juliet Herd.

Prince Charles was probably well advised this week to avoid the opening night of David Hare's revived classic Plenty, starring the luminous Cate Blanchett. Boldly stepping out in London's West End with his long-time squeeze Camilla Parker-Bowles, the Prince opted for the light-hearted musical comedy Animal Crackers.

Blanchett's simmering performance as the heroically unhinged and grandly stylish Susan Traherne in Jonathan Kent's Almeida Theatre production, would have no doubt proved too near the knuckle for the wary couple, who preferred to be entertained by Marx Brothers-style jokes.

In their absence, the statuesque Australian actor, making her London stage debut, was wholeheartedly embraced by a high-brow audience of film and theatre directors, open to "a performance so raw she might have ripped off a layer of skin" in the words of one critic.

The guest list included former National Theatre director Sir Richard Eyre, wunderkind Sam Mendes (who directed Nicole Kidman in Hare's The Blue Room), playwright Patrick Marber (Closer), Shakespeare In Love director John Madden and Anthony Minghella who has just directed Blanchett and Gwyneth Paltrow in his film The Talented Mr Ripley.

Pierce Brosnan (taking a break from filming the new James Bond), Lindsay Duncan and Sinead Cusack spearheaded the British acting contingent, while Penny Downie, Kathy Lette and Clive James flew the flag for Blanchett, also adoringly watched in the stalls by her scriptwriter husband Andrew Upton.

"Magnificent, Quite magnificent," was Madden's verdict of Blanchett's portrayal of the war heroine-turned-diplomat's wife unable to adapt to life in post-war England. "It will take everybody by storm," he predicted.

Minghella, who directed the Oscar-winning The English Patient, rhapsodised recently that Blanchett "shares with only a handful of her peers - Juliette Binoche and Meryl Streep among them - the hotline to the heart, the glimpse of soul, tiny flashes of joy and pain, and is apparently incapable of a lie".

Like Kidman and a stream of film stars before her, 29-year old Blanchett, who won a Golden Globe and a BAFTA best actress award for the film Elizabeth, and an Oscar nomination, has accepted a modest 250 pounds (A$675) a week for the privilege and challenge of appearing on the London stage. The theatre is sold out every night until July 10th when the play is due to close.

There's every likelihood, though, that Blanchett could follow Kidman to Broadway, making Plenty Hare's fifth New York opening night within a year, judging from the highly enthusiastic critical reaction. "Sex Appeal clings to her brisk, cool performance with almost indecent enthusiasm," panted The Evening Standard's theatre critic.

While some notes of reserve were struck, aimed more at the difficulties in portraying a character meant to symbolise Britain's moral decline, the overall consensus was that Blanchett had triumphed. (It is conveniently overlooked here that the NIDA-trained actor was a fixture on the Sydney stage for nearly a decade.)

The Daily Telegraph's theatre critic Charles Spencer declared her "sensational". "The evening will be remembered for Blanchett, who seizes the play by the scruff of the neck and often succeeds in shaking it into life," he said.

"The scenes of mental unbalance are among the most distressing I have seen on stage, but Susan never quite loses a patrician hauteur."

Benedict Nightingale of The Times found Blanchett to be more contradictory and complex in the role than either Kate Nelligan in the original 1978 National Theatre production or Meryl Streep "whose big-screen Susan streeped about altogether too forlornly".

"All this asks Blanchett to be svelte and assured, bitter and brassy, crazily aggressive and, as when her doomed hoped of motherhood enter the emotional equation, oddly vulnerable; and Blanchett gives us the lot," wrote Nightingale.

Sarah Hemming of The Financial Times found the actor "riveting" to watch, with her "chiseled cheekbones and coltish limbs", but queried her decision to play Susan in a state of "permanent hysteria". "Her performance is so raw that she might have ripped off a layer of skin..." said Hemming.
"The trouble is that she starts in the vein early rather than progressing into it, so that she is soon over-the-top and has nowhere to go."

It also could have been a touch of first-night nerves. As Blanchett observed at the party afterwards: "First nights always feel like an exam, and this is the most technical show I have ever been involved with. But it has been great.

The Australian, Monday, 3rd May, 1999.

PLENTY

Citation :

Thoughts O'Plenty
PLENTY by David Hare

Albery Theatre-London
Review: Sally Woodcock
Email: Sally

In the programme notes, David Hare states that his principal motivation for reviving PLENTY in 1999 is for the purpose of investigating how it holds up for a young audience for whom the second world war has no immediate relevance.

I, and I imagine a lot of others attracted to this play "starring Cate Blanchett", are of a generation who have only really come to understand the impact of the war in terms of it's political gains and losses, whilst the personal element is left to be accounted for by the access we are given to the recollections of our grandparents' generation, recollections which can sometimes seem inexplicable to those of us who would seek to understand something so seemingly tragic and painful - the sense of pride and excitement, an apparent romanticisation of the reality - the medals, the comradeship, the courage, the triumph of the human spirit over such atrocity, the elder gentlemen who seem insistent upon living out their twilight years as twenty-something soldiers getting drunk in the officer's mess, representing "the club" of those who experienced it all.

In this older generation's failure to communicate what my generation really wants to know about "the truth" of the war, lies the truth we have been missing out on by seeking to rectify our own feelings of exclusion - that the need to find a valid personal justification for what happened and the manifestation of this justification amongst those who survived is perhaps more revelatory than any fact about the war itself.

This is the territory PLENTY inhabits and what a bleak conclusion it draws. The characters and their reactions depicted in PLENTY are undeniably British and the play subsequently serves as a fascinating document of social history and it has certainly inspired me to seek out further understanding of this era.

However, it assumes a modern relevance particularly in 1999, as we look back over this century - indeed this millennium - and anticipate the future. As with the war, the way in which we interpret our past, will determine how equipped we are to forge an enlightened future.

The situations differ in that, in contemporary America, Britain and Australia to name but three, we are afforded a comparative objectivity in our hindsight over events, given that enough time has passed since the last previous cause of mass national trauma to most likely eliminate the confused emotional response that a war surely impacts upon people.

Now those amongst us who are still nursing their war-time scars are gradually disappearing, it is plays like PLENTY that remind us of why it is important to remember their lives as much as it is to give praise and blessing to those who sacrificed theirs - the struggle is not only in the physical nature of war itself, but in the "moving on".

Susan Traherne does "desperately want to be moving on" and her struggle leads her down the path of mental illness. We witness Susan's disillusionment amongst the diplomats whose "recovery" agenda is to simply get on with the business of clearing-up and climbing back up the political ladder; her frustration at the perceived lack of motivation for the wonderful changes that the end of the war had promised; and finally, her deteriorating nervous condition which peaks in the shaming climate of the Suez crisis.

In light of Britain's failure to make sense of it's physical and psychological state and to evolve beyond it in some manner of justification, it becomes apparent that only the experiences of the war itself could serve as defining moments in Susan's life and that the brilliant flashes of promise, liberation and profundity that occurred between explosions and torch-lights in the dark were the noblest revelations and accomplishments she would see.

Susan's inability to reconcile past, present and future and her subsequent breakdown mirrors the tragedy of post-war Britain and ultimately explains the reason why so many of those who survived the war have continued, to this day, to seek comfort, pride and identity in the exclusive confines of their wartime memories, both personal and collective.

So, what a demand this places upon any actress undertaking the responsibility of portraying not only the immediately complex psychological descent of an intelligent, ambitious, insightful but highly-strung woman, but also the responsibility of representing a national psyche.

I cannot imagine a role in which each level is more equally difficult and yet more equally important to get right. It requires the actress to perform an extraordinary balancing act in surrendering to the depiction of emotional turmoil, whilst also encouraging a highly intellectual reading.

The structure of the play itself does her no favours in it's chronological pacing - within the break of a single scene, the passing of several years dictates an accelerated change of pitch within the performance and, although I felt these changes to be more than adequately justified during the course of each scene, it requires an audience to make an unprepared for leap with the performance and, judging by several comments I overheard during the interval, it can bestow an unforgiving judgement of "shrillness" upon the actress.

Cate Blanchett, however, transcends these challenges with a skill and focus that is so complete as to barely register many of the accomplishments for which a lesser actress in a lesser role would receive accolades a-plenty.

It is the kind of performance with which I am sure are revealed new depths upon each viewing and I am definitely hoping to have several more opportunities to peel back the layers.

Instantly, Blanchett's presence on-stage is electrifying and one barely dares breathe as the tensions of Susan's mental condition crackle off her - at each stage of her deterioration, one wonders as to how much further the neurosis can be pushed before it snaps and, whilst Susan is clearly sinking to new depths, her observational faculties remain sharp and her articulation of them quite devastating and Blanchett's handling of this strangely accurate contradiction is unnervingly believable.

Susan wields her mental health problems as both a weapon and a shield - seemingly fully comprehending the effect her loss-of-control has on others without compromising it's status as a genuine loss-of-control. It is an astonishing performance, which blazes through your heart and head with a force that obliterates all else for hours and, I anticipate, days and weeks to come.

However, despite the commanding impression Blanchett makes, she is a generous actor and there is room for the whole cast to shine.

Particularly, excellent is Debra Gillett, as Susan's friend and room-mate, Alice - towards the end of the play, it is possible to absolutely see every movement Susan is making on the opposite side of the stage reflected in Gillett's face. Richard Johnson, as Sir Leonard Darwin, is also great value as the obligatory misguided, conservative, old-guard diplomat - blindly following tradition and protocol at all costs.

Maria Bjornson's set-design too is sympathetically unobtrusive, yet evocative and clear, whether settling in the claustrophobic dullness of Susan's tiny bed-sit or under the "mackerel" skies of a French field masquerading as something rather more mysterious in it's heavy mists and ever-retreating horizons.

Jonathon Kent's production is one of the richest and most rewarding artistic endeavours I could imagine witnessing and within the damning conclusions it draws about the politics of post-war Britain, it resounds with a poignancy and deeply-felt sympathy for the tragedy of those who were failed and any critics who might have you believe that there is nothing for us here beyond social documentation of a bygone era are failing you now.

May 4, 1999

J'ai du boulot lol

Erin a écrit:

c'est pénible ces crédits
après tout ce n'est pas eux qui ont pris les clichés !

Si tu savais le nombre de fois où Em et moi nous sommes dit la même chose...

sérieux ? wouah ! vous etes des zumelles !

Oh oui, très sérieux!...Nous avons même eu quelques pb avec une webmiss qui nous a pas mal enquiquinées...

laquelle ? si ce n'est pas trop indiscret ( que je ne lui pique pas des photos)

Un flyer trouvé sur Ebay pour Plenty