4 weeks rehearsal, 6 week run, then if you’re lucky, repeat. Done it all my life really and as I left ANTLive’s preview of their film of the stage play of Michael Gow’s AWAY, there was a very strong nostalgia for all the plays lost yet a bright pleasure at all the brilliant performances, the conceptualisation and creativity that goes into a production like this, now preserved. But more than this, shared.
As ANTLive Creative Director, Grand Dodwell said his intro to the screening “People get theatre … we must never lose the origins and essence.” “No green screen, no 3 lines per scene and an Australian story in a US dominated market” and young people to engage. To this end AWAY is being live-streamed into remote and regional NSW schools and with only 3 screenings in cinemas it is one to seek out.
Filmed with 8 x 4K HD cameras in single performance at Melbourne’s Malthouse Theatre, the show was a co-production between Malthouse and Sydney Theatre Company and played in Sydney, February 2017. You can read the SAG review here. I attended tonight’s preview screening with a friend who had seen that production and I could sense his enjoyment at the revisiting.
This film version pays such deep respect to the art of theatre in the way it is shot and edited. It begins with the front row of audience visible. In this way the viewer has their bearings. And then we are taken onto the stage, where the open wings are evident and the aloneness or closeness of events are contextualised. The camera pulls in very slightly towards Tom for Puck’s monologue but, after this, there is seldom any overt cinematographic technicalities to detract from the liveness of the capture.
The shot selection is crafted with skill and the editing foregrounds the emotional and thematic content of the production. No fades or wipes just cuts in nuanced cohesion with the play. The eye may be guided by reaction shots but these are subtly placed and in complete concert with the directorial imperatives. The filmic and editorial choices of close-up or long shot are used similarly but with an occasional added resonance, especially for group scenes. In one particularly moving whole cast scene, the viewer is gently initiated into the disorder and rabble that Coral sees in her mental distress.
Audio for the film is extremely well engineered. Gwen gets shrewish and strident without any speaker boom or audio trickery, the point is made by the superb performance. Sound effects of waves and bush and fireworks are woven discreetly into the audio plot and the recording and edit of the storm sequence is stylistically collaborative with the wide shot action.
ANTLive gives a stalls, dress circle, front row experience where you can see the chaotic scrabble on the floor for the contents of a spilled purse and yet sit back in your seat to take in the majesty of a superbly designed scene change. This digital innovation conserves beautifully with a sensitive touch that understands where art forms can meet without loss and where footlights become no barrier to engagement. Go out of your way to get to a showing, enjoy a choc top or a glass of wine and as Dodwell said tonight, “Settle back and enjoy the magic of theatre.”
ANTLive‘s AWAY has its Dendy Season, Sydney / Brisbane / Canberra at Sat 17th @ 1pm, Sun 18th @1pm & Wed 21st @ 10am. You can see a video trailer here.
