Ms TN is not a morning person. I was supposed to be at Footscray Hospital bright and early this a.m. so I could be injected with radioactive isotopes and put on a treadmill (don’t ask) but yesterday I entirely forgot about this appointment and drank a vat of coffee, thus invalidating the whole exercise. So I had to heave my carcass out of bed early so I could phone the Department of Nuclear Medicine, confess my idiocy and cancel the medical experiment.
So perhaps I was in a slightly misanthropic mood when I studied the Green Room Awards press release listing 2009’s winners, announced last night, which slid into my inbox first thing this morning. But I suspect that even had I bounced out of bed with a happy cry and greeted the dawn with rapture, my sunniness might have been a little eclipsed. It is a duty to disagree with awards, but it’s been a while since I’ve felt so at odds with their results.
Awards in the arts are always contentious. They depend, for a start, on committees of people agreeing on something, and in areas like the arts, perceptions of quality are inevitably – and in my view, necessarily – subjective. Even so, the conservatism of this year’s theatre awards is notable. Not that conservatism is, in itself, a bad thing – I don’t have many quibbles with Robyn Nevin’s gong for Best Female Performer, for her extraordinary performance in August: Osage County, nor for Simon Phillips’ direction, his best for years. But When The Rain Stops Falling as best mainstage production? And that script the best new writing of last year?
Michael Kantor’s Malthouse production of Happy Days – one of the shows of last year, and Kantor’s best direction yet – didn’t even make the shortlist for production or direction. (And yet the Malthouse’s indifferent production of Knives in Hens was up for both direction and best production.) Equally baffling is Daniel Schlusser’s superb and thoughtful Life is a Dream losing out in the indie best direction to Bagryana Popov’s disappointingly banal take on Chekhov, Progress and Melancholy.
There are, of course, worthy winners among them. You can’t miss the target all the time. But I might drink another vat of coffee today, as I reflect on the world’s folly and resistance to quality.
*
On a cheerier note, I hear that ABC Radio National’s Airplay is broadcasting Corvus, a beautiful script by ex-Melburnian and now Berliner Jasmine Chan. Featuring Bojana Novakovic and Ming-Zhu Hii, it will be worth twiddling the dial to hear this one. It goes to air on Saturday, March 28. While I’m at it, look out for Paul English reading Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet on ABC Radio’s First Person, airing from May 24-28. Now, that’s writing.
theatre notes 