GYPSY

A MUSICAL FABLE

So said the blurb from the Ballarat Arts Acadamy.

I had heard all about this Styne-Sondheim musical based on the book by Arthur Laurents but had never seen the show or the movie. So it was that I chose to go to the last performance of the programme in fact I had never been to the Post Office Box Theatre either so it was a totally new experience for me.

Having been to ‘Singing In The Rain’ and being impressed by that totally professional presentation I was keen to see what else our local ‘big smoke’ could come up with. Considering that most regional centres cannot field even one performing group I was not expecting that Ballarat could have more than three Top Class Theatre Groups.

I was, I suppose, not expecting much from University Students even though those august institutions seem to be the breeding ground for most of our comedians graduating predominantly from the Faculty of Law. The only other group of funny people coming from the legal profession are politicians who also seem to like performing in that long-standing show called ‘Question Time’.

Anyway, as I was saying, I was not holding my breath for a top notch show. The 10-piece orchestra at least for the Overture played a bit like a drunken burlesque troupe and was, in my opinion at the time, a bit rough but as the feet began tapping and the singing burst out upon the audience it seemed that the orchestra blended seamlessly with the on-stage cast and by the third scene Megan Adair (Gypsy Rose Lee), Lauren Baistow (Rose) and Bramwell Lancashire (Herbie) fully transported me into the world of Gypsy Rose Lee and lost my feeling of just being a spectator. (Bramwell Lancashire? Now what a mighty fine stage name that seems to be. It sort of reminds me of Berlington Bertie from Bow.)

Even though the Post Office Box Theatre is not really the best showcase for a fully cast musical it did present some challenges which were quiet ably solved by Douglas Iain Smith the Set Designer and the Director Terence O’Connell.

On the negative side I have one question for show-people who might read this article. Why is it that second-hand smoke from cigarettes is excluded from the theatre only to be replaced by first-hand smoke from a machine creating the atmosphere?

Finally I am still horrified that these students are brain-washed to believe they are professional and are banned from participating in local amateur productions. Because of this many of them will progress no further than a Pet Food Commercial.

In the film industry in America young people will even appear in porn movies so as ‘to be seen’ and the potential of a lucrative acting career. Very few ever make it past the casting couch and so they open themselves up to all potential avenues of employment.

To make our students believe that they should only ever appear in ‘professional productions’ closes them off from the opportunity to make a name for themselves and ‘be seen’.

What is better an ordinary job with a reasonable living and building a career in acting, or an acting job for three months a year if lucky and a part time job at Subway where you could be artistic with sandwiches but live in poverty?

It is still true that if you can’t do it you teach it. So we end up with a whole host of unemployed actors teaching others how to be unemployed actors.

SHOULD WE REALLY BE LAUGHING?

Everyone is innocent until proven guilty. We did not say too much in last months issue following the astonishing raids and subsequent revelations that there were drugs in Linton. Of course there are. Mogador, Valium, Prozac, Viagra, and other pick-me-ups or put-me-downs probably permeate every medicine cabinet in town in one form or another. You might even have some in your hand right now.

Rumours rush through Linton at astounding speed (slightly slower than astonishing) and we don’t want to add to all the fuss and bother. Things can get out of hand such as the request by the Historical Society to replace its ageing power board ended up in Council as a replacement of the entire front of the building.

Merriment aside should we make light of drugs of any kind? Doesn’t laughing at drug jokes indicate that we don’t give a damn about them one way or the other. Might we think differently if we found drug paraphanalia in our childrens’ undies drawer.

Comedy acts abound with jokes about tokes, snorts, and sniffs, drunks and fights, smokers cough and hangovers, ice, speed, yarndie, snowed noses and dilated eyes but should they? Should we?

One argument says we should - if they exist then they have to be addressed. Comedy is one way that we can begin to discuss the subject. The drug is not the real problem anyway it’s what happens to some people when they take them. More abuse of women and children occur at home by drunken males than any other crime.

The other side suggests that bringing drugs out in the open condones their use of and that out-of-sight and out-of-mind is a far better option.

Lets face it we believe that both sides fail miserably. The war on drugs like the war in Afghanistan is unwinnable. You cannot win any conflict whilst abuse exists. Whatever the form it takes be it physical, political, emotional, power-seeking, sexual , religious, racial or tribal.

While corruption by those in power continues whether it be in the Europe or in Syria we will have the scourge of hard illicit drugs. We don’t have the answer yet, you can’t just say ‘NO’ and you can’t just legalise it but we can do our bit by recognizing any abuse and standing up against it.

How much an gram? Your joking of course?

(Note however that 18% of women assault their male partners and also take note of how often the word ‘Step’ is used when many of the perpetrators are described.) 

WANKERS ON WHEELS

Now don’t get me wrong folks some of my best friends are wankers and some of my friends ride pushbikes but I am quite proud of the fact that I hate the wankers-on-bikes that seem to work for the Department of Stupidity and want to make car drivers and the economy suffer.

The Victorian Government is in the throes of examining why we still keep killing ourselves and others with our cars. Like the fact that it is not guns that kill people let us say from the get go that speed is not the culprit either but the wanker holding the wheel.

People who drive for a living all agree that speed is not the main culprit. Many of them want speeds to actually increase. When there were no speed limits outside towns and cities we only had about double the number of deaths we have now.

Uh!? What did I just say? Yes. We have halved the death toll in Victoria in the last fourty years. That is an achievement. But its an achievement reached almost exclusively by better designed vehicles, ABS brakes, air-bags and seat belts, baby capsules and head rests and a whole raft of other vehicle improvements. I don’t know the figures nor can we find them out accurately but it appears to me that a great many deaths occur when rat-bags are exceeding the speed limit, not by 5 or 15 k/ph but by 50 and 60Km an hour. When young people kill themselves hitting trees at 160Km an hour it is a tragedy, sure, but can we say the accident was senseless when the cast and crew in the vehicle were probably egging each other on the go even faster around the next bend and, quite possibly, under the influence of materials in the next story..

What does slowing cars down do? It adds to the economic cost of running motor vehicles. When a motor vehicles optimum performance is around 100 K/ph what is the cost of 40K/ph past schools? It is especially galling when the limit applies half an hour before and after school. If schools allow children out earlier or later than the approved times then they should be held responsible for the safety of the child crossing the street. For Christ’s sake what would it cost and how much would the economy save by just putting enclosed overhead pedestrian crossings on all streets around the boundary of a school?

Let us hope that someone less stupid than those looking into this problem come up with sensible and realistic answers than just the age old problem solver of slowing down the traffic.

Violet Crumble