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n.
The Blind Giant is Dancing
A
Company B Production for the Belvoir StreetTheatre 1995
Running
time: 3 hours, 30 minutes
Allen
Fitzgerald ~ self-hating, passionate political activist in freefall despair
Cast:
Hugo
Weaving Allen Fitzgerald, Cate Blanchett
Rose
Draper, Catherine McClements
Louise Fitzgerald, Peter Carroll
Doug Fitzgerald, Russell Keifel Michael
Wells, Kerry Walker Eileen Fitzgerald,
Jason
Clarke Bruce Fitzgerald,
Jacek
Koman Ramon, Ralph Cotterill
Graham
White/Sir Leslie Harris, Steve Rodgers Bruce
Lang, Keith Robinson, Gillian
Jones Janice Lang/Diane/Jane
Dir:
Neil
Armfield Wri:
Stephen
Sewell
Set
Design Stephen Curtis Costume Design
Edie
Kurzer
Lighting:
Mark Shelton Composer Paul
Charlier
Theatrical
run: Previews August 12th, 13th; Performances August 15th-September
10th 1995 |
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Hugo
Weaving: The Blind Giant is Dancing Plot/Comments:
Set
against the dismantling of nationalised industry and wholesale takeovers
by foreign forces, The Blind Giant is Dancing shows a painful picture
of one man's disintegration in his quest for power over his political and
personal lives.
At the beginning of the play, we see political activist Allen Fitzgerald
(Hugo Weaving) in incredible isolation and pain. Because of his sensitivity
to the general breakdown of society, he feels he is being dragged down
and drowned by the relentless harshness of reality; whether it is his crumbling
marriage, torn apart by distrust and the trap of living in a politically-correct,
feminist-friendly union; or the bleak cruelty of people being forced to
live as animals because society is either unwilling or helpless to change
it.
The only
things that Allen has to cling onto are his personal morality and his belief
in changing the system to help the People. However, as he becomes swept
up in the momentum of political power struggles with his nemesis Michael
Wells (leader of the Labor party's dominant Right faction), and is forced
by seductive journalist Rose Draper to confront his own desires, he
comes to compromise these very political and moral ideals, leaving him
with nothing except the bitterness of experience. |
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The
origins of Allen's eventual personal failure are shown in many tense and
vulnerable scenes from his home life: the miscommunication which has filled
his marriage to Louise (Catherine McClements) with such disillusionment;
and the guilt-ridden powerplays of his emotionally-crippled family, headed
by his stern and domineering father, Doug (Peter Carroll), whose cold and
authoritarian love has set Allen on the path to self-destruction from childhood. |
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The
third act is full of the concentrated guilt and pain of all the characters.
For Allen in particular, these are now the only things he is able to feel,
despite his protestations of love for the doomed and unobtainable Rose.
Perhaps more so than the political machinations which are dragging him
down, it is this tortured relationship which most leaves him vulnerable
and decimated: never more so than in their penultimate scene of emotional
cat-and-mouse, where she finally verbally reciprocates his love in a calculated
move to permanently hurt him (see Classic
Scenes ).
By the end of the play, Allen has become consumed by personal hatred
which
outweighs even his obsessive loathing for Wells and disgust in the Workers/People
he once had so much faith in. Just as he once became a priest because he
desperately wanted to believe in God, so he became an activist because
he wanted to believe that a better way of living was possible: when he
finally abandons all belief in his ideals, he is ready to become a professional
politician, ready to do whatever it takes to stay in (personal) power. |
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Blind Giant Gallery
Classic
'Blind Giant' Scenes
Next: The Alchemist
Back: Bordertown
Previous Play: Arcadia
Web Weaving
Typical
Hugo Weaving Quotes:
-
SeeClassic
Scenes for 5 from Blind Giant
-
Louise:
"Are normal people turning into cockroaches?"
Allen: "I'm absolutely certain I'm turning into a cockroach"
-
"I didn't
realise we were talking about the utility of emotions"
-
On
the sexually-loaded first conversation with Rose: "Do I pay for this
by the half hour, or what?"
-
To
Louise: "You don't know how alone I am"
-
To
Rose: "You seem to ooze this air of mysterious sensuality like a fucking
squid's ink or some damn thing"
-
"You've
convinced me love doesn't exist: it's just the selfish rape of another"
-
"We're
the corpses of hope"
-
"I know
what I've become"
-
[To
his brother, on visiting a brothel, owned by a political rival]: "I
wanted to feel everything that stinking deal meant. I wanted that horror,
that degradation, because if I was going to do it, I wanted it all. I'm
lost, Bruce. Get out before I burn you"
-
"The world
is a perfect reflection of the human heart"
Comments
and Queries:
-
Possibly
the most notable case of Weaving's tendency to work with people repeatedly.
Cate Blanchett was also in Bordertown(before
or after this play?), Drama School
and The Lord of
the Rings . Peter Carroll has
frequently worked with him, especially in theatre: e.g. Melba,
The
Perfectionist, Macbeth, The Madras
House and others.
Catherine McClements was in The
Right Hand Man and After
the Deluge . Jacek Koman worked
with him earlier on The
Taming of the Shrew and
Steve Bisley was in
Don's
Party. Steve Rodgers was in That
Eye, The Sky. Neil Armfield later
directed Weaving with original Allen Fitzgerald, Geoffrey Rush, in The
Alchemist . See The
Usual Suspects for a huge list
of recurring Weaving co-workers.
-
Coincidentally,
Weaving's character in Peaches,
also called Allen, started off as a pure-minded Union activist but was
forced to compromise, becoming foreman and earning the hatred of those
who once looked up to him.
-
Other
characters in a long line of self-haters. See Bordertown,
That
Eye, The Sky, Proof,
The
City's Edgefor some examples
-
Playscript
of the revised 1995 version available from Currency Press, Australia. Cover
photograph of Hugo Weaving and Catherine McClements (as above); photographs
from the original Geoffrey Rush production inside, as well as some from
the 1995 production (though none of Weaving or Blanchett).
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One
of the major themes of Sewell's play is how power affects the individual
and how we are forced to compromise our instincts and ideals in order to
work with others, and with society as a whole. Allen's metamorphosis shows
us not only how individual desires are constantly driven by larger, more
powerful, forces but also, how these very forces (e.g. political trends
and movements, relationships) are also shaped by basic and instinctual
forces from within individuals: the two are interdependent
yet we have no real control over either.
In Armfield's 1995 version, the idea of characters being just cogs in the
wheels of various systems was overtly represented by the harsh, blunt,
industrial sound effects and the stark, shadowed design; the only
major set piece being a large table on wheels, which was moved around to
represent various settings, separating characters physically, just as they
are separated emotionally. |
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This is an emotionally painful play: there are many long scenes of disillusioned
embitteredness, accusation and despair, where anguished characters unsuccessfully
plead their love for each other. The emotional drama is almost stylistically
exaggerated ~ without ever becoming histrionic ~ like experiencing freefall
or watching a train crash; the pace increasing relentlessly as the
action develops and the scenes becoming ever shorter as the play tears
towards the conclusion.
The scenes with Allen's family were particularly intense, and critics praised
the barbeque scene, which combined comic observations of a typically dysfunctional
family with rising tensions, which repeatedly came close to flash-point,
only to be repressed once more and forced back down. Allen is unsually
silent in this scene: the majority of lines are spoken by the other
characters, leaving Weaving to convey Allen's simmering rage and helplessness
almost solely by body language, until his childlike admission of marital
powerless to his father (Peter Caroll) at the end. James Waites
of The Sydney Morning Herald noted how this scene was "worked
up to a level of hypnotic clarity by Armfield and his superb cast [and]
caught the opening night's audience by surprise. It was then we knew we
were witness to a remarkable theatrical event". |
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Coming
over ten years after the original production and in the brief, post-Berlin
Wall era of Perestroika, Clinton and liberalism, Blind Giant
could have seemed outdated (though as ever, history repeats itself and
its relevance has come full-circle). However, Armfield cleverly chose to
bring the sado-masochistic relationship between Allen and Rose to the centre
of the 1995 production, paring the play down significantly, though still
coming in at 3 ½ hours. |
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Although
Rose's seduction of Allen is initially political, it becomes wholly personal,
with her putting his purity on trial. By choosing to bring their
relationship into focus, combined with the chemistry of Weaving and Blanchett,
Armfield made Rose's final victory over Allen utterly hollow :
"I hoped you'd win," she says when he leaves ~ they have both been seeking
redemption and his moral failure (and ironically, her professional triumph)
is the last chance for both of them: the utter bleakness of personal relationships
on display here is incredibly disturbing (see Classic
Scenes ). |
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"Giant
positively sparkles. The actors rise superbly to the challenge of Sewell's
intelligent script. The most focus, deservedly, will be on Hugo Weaving
for his completely convincing portrayal of a complex transformation" ~
Allen
Myers |
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"A
remarkable theatrical event… Weaving's Allen is a man of idealistic and
principled origins, but there is poison in his blood, passed onto him by
an unyielding father... as [his]struggle drifts helplessly from the ideological
to the personal, Allen subtly assumes his father's pent up body language
and angrily castrated voice-box.
Weaving,
fantastic, finds a springboard into his bravura characterisation in the
blunt, unforgiving Australian-ness of Sewell's language and outlook. Weaving's
Allen is genuine, clever, searching, tortured from within, corruptible,
corrupted - ultimately transformed into everything he once loathed."
~
James Waites: The Sydney Morning Herald, Aug 18, '
95 |
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"The
play is nothing short of a masterwork… Hugo Weaving plays Allen Fitzgerald...who
not only has to come to terms with the morality of politics - a contradiction
in terms - but also a personal struggle influenced by guilt and complex
feelings toward his Jewish wife and domineering, working-class father.
Enter into the melee Rose Draper (Cate Blanchett), a beautiful financial
journalist obsessed with power and powerful men - the result is dynamite.
A
production this engaging and exciting is rare, particularly with a cast
so uniformly terrific.
Weaving
takes control of the stage masterfully and Blanchett is sultry, sexy and
seductive, providing an irresistible force which accelerates Allen on his
road to moral destruction."
~
Stewart Hawkins: The Daily Telegraph Mirror, Aug 18th, 1995
. |
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Hugo
Weaving content:
Allen
is consumed with self-doubt and self-loathing: in his youth, he studied
to become a priest but ended up an aetheist; he fought to become a professor
but ended up earning less than his steel labourer father; he wanted peace
and happiness in the world but tried to commit suicide. |
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Later revelations show that he became a priest because he wanted
to believe; that when the family buried his brother, killed in Vietnam,
his straight, blue-collar, conservative father blamed him and his 'communist'
ways for killing his brother, and that he has carried this mixture of guilt,
self-hatred and disgust in his father (combined with a biblically traditional
family loyalty) ever since. Throughout the play we see him (and the equally
damaged Rose) repeatedly questioning personal identity and desperately
trying to feel something ~ anything. As his mother says, "it's like
watching a man struggling to death with himself".
By the end of the play, Allen has given up his idealism for cynical reality,
playing the games he was once so sickened by in others. In the last few
scenes, the utterly changed Allen bitterly confesses to his brother how
he made a deal with a political enemy and known crimelord, receiving a
complimentary visit to his best brothel and picking a woman (or perhaps
several), just to "feel everything that stinking deal meant. I wanted that
horror, that degradation, because if I was going to do it, I wanted it
all".
As his own identity crumbles and he becomes consumed by self-hatred and
political backstabbing, Allen echoes the father he has finally come to
outwardly decry (while simultaneously defending Doug's right as a father
to do anything he wants to his family).Waites noted how Weaving showed
this and "subtly assumed his father's [played by Peter Carroll] pent
up body language and angrily castrated voice-box". Just as his
stern, domineering and emotionally distant father shut his own family out
of his life when challenged, so Allen does to his younger brother, saying
the same lines as his father: "you should never trust anyone"; Sewell's
lines amplifying how he has become all that he hated personally as well
as politically and morally. |
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