Susan Mitchell on Festivals

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

And the last shall be first

THIS is not about knocking Adelaide. It is about praising Brisbane. It is also about asking some hard questions.

I have recently returned from The Brisbane Festival (September 4-25) and must admit to being gobsmacked by what they turned on. I say this having witnessed and loved most of the Adelaide Festivals since they began in 1960. I was still at school when I saw my first major theatrical production in the Bonython Theatre. Zoe Caldwell in Saint Joan. I was hooked on arts festivals from then on.

Adelaide was among the first cities in Australia to present a major Festival of Arts, modelled on the established Edinburgh Festival. So not only did we set the national template and the highest of standards, we soon realised that we were the perfect size and planned city for a festival.

We had enough theatres that we could walk between and the perfect climate in March for outdoor events. We started with a biennial Festival because true to our natural inclination we were cautious and not prone to biting off more than we could chew. So successful were we that visitors came from all over the nation and even from overseas to experience the artistic riches we presented.

We even officially branded ourselves The Festival State and displayed it proudly on our car numberplates.

Of course the other capital cities looked on with envy and one by one they created their own festivals. Melbourne and Sydney, however, keen to outdo Adelaide, decided to make their Arts festival an annual event. They figured that something which was so successful and gave such pleasure to so many people should happen every year.

Adelaide, however, refused to follow them. In fact, The Board of Governors who ran the festival, argued that having it every other year was what made it “so special”. I cannot understand the logic of this and never could. If you applied this to other pleasures such as great food or wine or sex, would you opt to enjoy them every year or every two years?

In desperation, as Chair of Adelaide Writers Week, fondly known as the jewel in the crown, I and my board explored and promulgated the possibility of Writers Week being an annual event. So outraged was the Board of Governors that we were all sacked and a new board appointed who would never raise the question again.

Now, 16 years later, another Board of Management of the Adelaide Festival has decided that both the Festival and Writers Week should become annual events every March. Why did it take Adelaide so long to catch up to the other festivals? That is an interesting question for another column – but now I want to review the recent Brisbane Festival.

In 1996, Brisbane was the very last capital city in Australia to produce an arts festival. In fact Brisbane, like Perth, was even smaller than Adelaide not so many decades ago.

Brisbane was viewed by the rest of the nation as a bit backward in the arts and a rather unsophisticated country town. Its culture was known for its corruption not its creativity. And then it found itself the host of Expo and never looked back.

The city is strangely shaped and rather cramped between the river and the suburbs. And the Brisbane River was brown and rather sluggish, much like The River Torrens.

When Sally-anne Atkinson was Lord Mayor she realised that all great cities make the most of their river and she set about building boardwalks and bridges which in turn spawned restaurants and cafes.

When Jim Soorley took over as Lord Mayor he made the river and its banks the focal point of the city and added river ferries to transport people to its various hubs, including the University. Boardwalks now line both sides of the River and various bridges lead us to the major cultural institutions on the river’s South Bank.

In short Brisbane developed way beyond anyone’s expectations and has continued to flourish. If you haven’t been there for a while you should go, just to view it for yourself.

As the youngest Arts Festival it took a while to get the citizens attuned to what it offered.

This year, under the artistic directorship of Noel Staunton, it has taken off. I witnessed the kind of genuine excitement in the crowds that flocked to the events I attended that I remembered from the grand days of our festivals where we trekked to unused quarries and stayed awake until dawn just to witness and experience Peter Brook’s epic play, The Mahabharitah.

No, I am not going to wallow in sentimental nostalgia, although I did note that when Stephen Fry was performing his monologue at the Sydney Opera House recently, he did actually say when comparing his experience at various festivals, “it was nothing like the old Adelaide Festival was” – the use of the past tense being a clear implication that our festival has declined.

Noel Staunton, is widely known in the Arts as Mr Fix-it and it was to him that we turned when our production of The Ring Cycle was going pear-shaped. He made sure that it was a triumph and recognised as one of the best productions in the world.

Did we capitalise on this triumph, which was another first for Australia? Alas, no. It was so sensational and gave so much pleasure to so many people, the powers that be clearly reasoned that what would make it really “special” was doing it every 10 years.

So Brisbane snapped up Mr Staunton and he created a buzz in the city that they have never before experienced. Not only did he use all the established performing venues but for the first time they experienced a free night at the Opera at the Eagle Farm Racecourse. I was told that so enthralled were they at this new experience that blokes who were looking for their cars after the Opera were singing out directions in the style of Figaro.

Staunton also turned one of the spaces in the old Brisbane Powerhouse (saved form demolition by Jim Soorley) into an amphitheatre. On the nights I was there, The Powerhouse was charged by the enthusiasm of people attending its various theatres and eating and drinking in the restaurants on the edge of the Brisbane River. I can still see the hundreds of tiny lights either side of the pathways in the darkness of the amphitheatre pinpointing their ladders into the sky.

The four performances that I saw were all different, all excellent in standard and all packed to the rafters. There was a one man performance of Beckett by an Irish actor on an almost bare stage which held the audience spellbound for nearly two hours. It was funny, sad and utterly riveting.

Meryl Tankard, much beloved of Adelaide audiences until an act of sheer stupidity caused us to lose her and her talents, presented a new, mesmerising show The Oracle, which is going on to New York after Brisbane.

Every festival should include a new Australian premiere and Brisbane’s was Shanghai Lady Killer which had all the fun of film noir, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon and Kill Bill backed by an original music score. The audience screamed and shouted their approval.

And in an exclusive performance for Brisbane, the national Ballet of Cuba performed a dazzling production of Don Quixote. The audience didn’t just clap and scream, some stood up and whistled, some were so excited they stood on their seats to applaud.

Staunton, with all his knowledge and experience of past festivals in other states and other countries has delivered Brisbane a knockout festival. Lucky them.

Declaration: Susan Mitchen is an Honorary Ambassador, City of Brisbane.

www.susanmitchell.com.au