Australian Theatre on Tour

Eloise Mignon in Belvoir's production of The Wild Duck (photo by Heidrun Lohr)

By Elissa Blake

Selling coal to Newcastle is one thing. But how about exporting an Ibsen play to Norway?

In the wake of the European success of the Sydney Theatre Company’s production of Gross und Klein starring Cate Blanchett, Belvior will be flying their acclaimed adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s The Wild Duck to the International Ibsen Festival in Olso, a 15-day celebration of the playwright’s work and enduring influence. The festival lineup, to be held in August, is announced in Oslo tonight.

“It’s going to be a very expensive three nights of theatre,” says Belvoir’s resident director, Simon Stone, who also adapted the script with actor and writer Chris Ryan. “Actually, it’s ridiculously expensive but the Norwegians really want us to go.”

Stone’s Wild Duck cut Ibsen’s original five-act structure into a modernised, screenplay-like 90-minutes. It won three 2011 Helpmann Awards for Best Play, Best Female Actor in a Supporting Role (Anita Hegh) and Best Male Actor in a Supporting Role (Anthony Phelan). At the 2011 Sydney Theatre Awards it also won Best Mainstage Production and Best Direction of a Mainstage Production with more awards going to Hegh and Phelan.

Stone has managed to secure most of the original cast for the Oslo tour, including Toby Schmitz, Eloise Mignon and Phelan. Hegh and John Gaden will be unable to reprise their roles. Hegh will be performing in the Melbourne Theatre Company’s production of Caryl Churchill’s Top Girls. Gaden will be performing in another Simon Stone adaptation/production, Face To Face, this time for the Sydney Theatre Company. Ewen Leslie is expected to reprise his central role but is unconfirmed at the time of writing.

“Replacing Anita and John will be very difficult,” says Stone, who also has to find a replacement duck. The live ducks used in the Sydney and Melbourne productions have since retired to a petting zoo, he says. “The Norwegians will be getting a local duck at the right time so that when we arrive, it will be ready and we can say, ‘hello duck, it’s time to act’.”

Simon Stone (photo Heidrun Lohr)

Stone will be travelling to Oslo with Belvoir’s artistic director Ralph Myers, who designed the set, to oversee the remount.

Held every two years, the International Ibsen Festival is curated by Norway’s National Theatre. The repertoire includes the Theatre’s own productions, as well as guest performances, seminars, debates and other events.

Belvoir’s Wild Duck will be playing in distinguished company. The program includes two productions written by German experimental theatre maker Heiner Goebbels (this year’s winner of the International Ibsen Award) and German company Rimini Protokoll’s En folkefiende i Oslo, a radical adaptation of Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People.

While in Oslo, Stone will also be working on a script for a film version of The Wild Duck.

“It will be vastly different from the play,” Stone says who is hoping to start shooting the film at end of 2013. “Hopefully it will be made in Australia but I still haven’t worked out exactly where it will be set. Location is so important in film.”

Stone says he is excited to be taking The Wild Duck to the home of Ibsen because, “it is an unapologetically Australian production.”

“It’s Australian theatre culture as it is now. It doesn’t represent a cowed version of some other great theatrical tradition,” he says.

“We’re full of the hubris of a young and sparsely populated country believing it has something to say to the world. It’s something we’ve done in sport and academia and journalism for a long time already. We’ve got to a point in our culture where the old questions of what it is to be Australian – which was an important question in terms of feeling small on a world scale – has been answered, I think. Now it’s what do we want to say? What does each individual want to say and how does that cornucopia represent the Australian artistic identity right now?”

A new generation of writers and directors has challenged the predictability of theatre in Australia, says Stone. “I think it’s time for international audiences to see the benefit of those experiments. It’s time for people to say, ‘I have never seen theatre like Australian theatre’.

“I think we’re in a very exciting period in Australian theatre history,” believes Stone.  “It’s a renaissance and we’re right at the very beginning.” 

Cate Blanchett in the STC production of Gross und Klein. 

Matthew Whittet in Belvoir's The Book of Everything.

Lieven Bertels, director of the Sydney Festival and former director of the world-renowned Holland Festival, says the rest of the world is starting to notice Australian theatre with Belvoir’s The Book of Everything playing in New York and Gross und Klein now in London and about to head to Austria and Germany, and the STC’s Uncle Vanya playing at New York’s City Center in July.

“There’s a chance Australia is becoming flavour of the month (or let’s hope decade), with early signs of more interest on various stages worldwide,” he says.

Australian contemporary dance companies, such as Bangarra Dance Theatre, Force Majeure, Chunky Move, and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and the Australian Chamber Orchestra, have toured Europe many times, but theatre has been more challenging to tour. “The market for Australian dance and music is naturally larger because there are no language barriers,” says Bertels. “Spoken word theatre is more difficult to sell outside the UK, USA and Canada (hence: in 80% of the world, something easily overlooked by English spoken companies perhaps). Exceptions are those companies that find a unique selling point other than being Australian, as in the internationally renown star that they can bring (Blanchett), a rarely performed repertoire piece, or an international collaboration within the work itself such as STC co-production with Onroerend Goed A History of Everything, now playing in Plymouth.”

 This story was first published in The Sydney Morning Herald on April 24.