Domestic drama a real headache

Press, 23 September 1987, Page 22

Domestic drama a real headache

By

DAVID CLARKSON

Ken Blackburn is expecting a _ thumping headache before the end of each performance of the Court Theatre’s production of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”

The cause will not be the enormous amount of drink that gets consumed in the course of more than three hours on stage. Tony Geddes has designed a “cityscape of bottles” placed strategically at centre stage, from which the four characters will keep their bioodalcoho! levels fairly high. But during the 15 performances starting from September 25, the actors will be consuming water in place of all the gin, and flat ginger ale instead of the whisky and brandy. “It has to be flat ginger ale so you don’t gag,” Blackburn explained.

His headaches will be brought on by having to

go without his spectacles, in the part of George. A $350 investment in contact lenses a few years ago proved a waste. He cannot keep them in. The production, with Elizabeth Moody in the role of Martha, is to mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of the play’s first production.

An edited version of the play was presented by the Court 15 years ago, but the director, Elric Hooper, does not wish to make any cuts in the latest production.

Said Blackburn: “Whether the audience stays with what is essentially a domestic bullfight which they put on for two unwanted guests, will depend largely on the temperature at which we play it”

Carried on by some extremely clever dialogue, the couple would try to

undermine and humiliate each other, he said.

“I believe there was quite a sensation when it first hit the boards in America. It was the first time that domestic drama :had really been shown in such a raw state.”

The Edward Albee play first appeared on Broadway 25 years ago. Blackburn has performed in a shortened, Radio New Zealand version of it, but he believes such productions will not be done again. "There is a policy in Radio New Zealand of only doing New Zealand works, which is a great shame because the question of worthiness seldom seems to be in the forefront.” Blackburn’s career spans 26 years, with work in Britain, Australia and New Zealand, and several productions in Christ-

church, but he has never worked at the Court before.

A lot of his work has been in television and the voice-over market He did five series — 35 episodes — of the situation comedy about Wellington’s occasionally civil servants, “Gliding On,” written by Roger Hall. "Roger has no desire to write any more, and I think that is great because I have no desire to play any more.” He believes New Zealand is so small that actors do not take long “to bump their heads against the ceiling” of the profession. ' . “What is called fame anywhere else in the world, in New Zealand is called over-exposure, and you end up getting no work,” he said. Theatre was suffering from an international

malaise, with theatres collapsing all over the world. He believed it was a cyclical effect, which returned every four or five years. ■ In London, the West End was closing through lack of patronage. “Apathy has accomplished what the Luftwaffe never could,” he said.

In New Zealand, corporate sponsorship was needed so the arts would no longer depend on Government hand-outs, apportioned by an arts council acting as “cultural traffic wardens,” he said. He listed several New Zealand stage productions which had folded this year, and compared them to British farces such as “Run For Your Wife” which had been very successful.

“I don’t denigrate them. They know there to money to be made,” he said.

When hto season at the Court is finished, he will return home to Auckland for a commission to write short stories for the Broadcasting Corporation. He now talks about “looking for a proper job.”

“There are an awful lot of very good actors who are doing other things because there is not the work. I am appalled with the fact that we do not nurture the experience of our actors.

“I am grateful to have had the opportunity of .working in this business for as long as I have. I just hope there is a future for all of us,” he said.