A dozen different shades of deadpan

Press, 15 May 1987, Page 15

A dozen different shades of deadpan

Don McGlashan ’ and Harry Sinclair bring their formidable range of talents to “Kaleidoscope” (9.15 p.m. on One tonight) in a piece composed especially for the programme. The pair, who call themselves The Front Lawn, have been described as one of the most exciting new theatre companies working in New Zealand today. McGlashan and Sinclair describe their work as “small scale, high energy, live entertainment for people with their own teeth.” McGlashan is a musician and composer, Sinclair an actor and musician. As The Front Lawn, they combine music, theatre and dance, rapidly switching from stand-up comedy to serious songs and sketches. Electric guitar, euphonium, drums and concertinas are some of the instruments they use to accompany their songs. Using everyday objects and situations, they make epic theatre out of toast and jam, and opera with kettles and milk bottles. For the “Kaleidoscope” piece, they have taken their unique style of live performance from the stage to the street Working with a TVNZ film

editor, Bill Koepfer (who also directed the piece), they devised a 10-minute script set in Auckland’s cosmopolitan Karangahape Road. “We saw it as an opportunity to do something quite different from what we do on stage,” said Harry Sinclair. “So instead of adapting something from our live show, we started thinking about what we would like to see on film. “We wrote a little story about people walking down Karangahape Road, 14 people in fact, all played by Don or me. And it was a great experience to get out on the street and perform to a startled audience of shoppers, office workers, school-kids and pensioners.”

The music track,

created by Don McGlashan and Wayne Laird, who previously worked together in “From Scratch,” uses only sounds one would actually hear on the street, such as footsteps, car doors and car horns. The sounds were fed into a computer before being mixed into the musical score.

Each character also has his own footstep “sound.” “The tourist has squeaky sandshoes, the depressed character has leaden boots, the fraught chemist has a limp.”

The 10-minute film item, which was co-fin-anced by TVNZ and the Arts Council, is preceded by Rood’s 8-minute “off the wall” introduction to The Front Lawn. A table set with plates, cups, cutlery, toaster, electric jug, teapot and milk bottles becomes a ready-made percussion jazz combo. A constant rhythmic and musical thread holds all the elements together.

As a reviewer said of The Front Lawn: “All of it served up with quirky grace by masters of a dozen different shades of deadpan.”

Also on “Kaleidoscope” tonight, Liz Grant talks to the painter, Evelyn Page, and features her work.