Sixteen Words for Water
Sixteen Words for Water by Billy Marshall Stoneking, directed by Lawrence
Strangio. La Mama, Carlton Courthouse until March 26.
"Put down thy vanity", wrote Ezra Pound in a bleak moment. "Thou art a
beaten dog beneath the hail / A swollen magpie in a fitful sun." Those lines
give an arresting image of Pound himself: at once beaten and desolate, and
swollen with vain intellectual hubris.
At the time he wrote them, after the liberation of Italy by the Allied
forces, Pound was imprisoned by the American military authorities in a cage
in Pisa. He had been making broadcasts for Mussolini's Fascist Italy that
bitterly excoriated the US government. He faced the death penalty for
treason in wartime, but was judged too unsound of mind to face trial, and
was instead incarcerated in an American institution for the criminally
insane for 13 years, until the campaigning of his literary friends resulted
in his release.
Sixteen Words for Water is set at this time, when Pound was a celebrity
lunatic visited by the literary elite and curious students, and a
governmental embarrassment. Although this play was written more than 15
years ago, it seems to have a particular cogency now; either the times have
caught up with it, or we have retreated back to Pound's era. Pound was a
dissenter, and a most difficult one: a supporter of Fascism and a vocal
anti-Semite, who railed against the sins of usury with the fervour of an Old
Testament prophet.
Read more at http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
The Big Con
The Big Con by Guy Rundle, directed by Aubrey Mellor and Denis Moore, with
Max Gillies and Eddie Perfect. Malthouse Theatre until April 3.
Sometimes I feel ambivalent about political satire. Is it merely a
comforting release that assures us (the Right - or in this case, the Left -
Minded) that we are superior to those we dislike? Might it not be, in some
way, inherently conservative, for all its assumption of subversiveness?
I wonder if, rather than provoking thought, satire might simply confirm
one's beliefs. George Bush's surreal approach to the English language might
be amusing, but does mocking it make any difference? After all, his
hokiness is a large part of his appeal in the fundamentalist heartland; and
sneering at it just proves that those chardonnay-sipping elites are, well,
elitist.
Read more at http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
All the best
Alison
Alison Croggon
Blog: http://theatrenotes.blogspot.com
Editor, Masthead: http://masthead.net.au
Home page: http://alisoncroggon.com
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