{"id":6302,"date":"2024-09-24T19:03:13","date_gmt":"2024-09-24T08:33:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/?p=6302"},"modified":"2024-09-24T19:03:13","modified_gmt":"2024-09-24T08:33:13","slug":"guest-post-stephen-orr-cheery-soul","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/2024\/09\/guest-post-stephen-orr-cheery-soul\/","title":{"rendered":"GUEST POST: Stephen Orr on A Cheery Soul<\/i>"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Wakefield Press is looking forward to heading to Holden Street Theatres<\/a> this week to watch ‘surreal satirical masterpiece’ A Cheery Soul<\/em> by Patrick White, directed by Peter Goers<\/a>. We’re pleased now to be sharing Stephen Orr<\/a>‘s programme notes, shared with permission from Holden Street Theatre and Peter Goers.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Read Stephen’s lively notes below. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Banner image sourced from Wiki Commons<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Programme Notes: A Cheery Soul<\/em><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In a Canberra Times<\/em> review of Jim Sharman\u2019s 1979 revival of Patrick White\u2019s A Cheery Soul<\/em>, critic Ken Healey wrote: \u2018A Cheery Soul<\/em> is one of the most profoundly satisfying experiences I have had of Australian theatre. It compares with seeing the whole of Lawler\u2019s \u2018Doll\u2019 trilogy in a single day, and exceeds the delight of attending Williamson\u2019s greatest successes.\u2019 The production, a career-defining tour-de-force for Robyn Nevin as the titular Miss Docker, came as more Australians were becoming aware of the 1973 Nobel laureate\u2019s body of work (what Barbara Blackman called the \u2018Patrick White Australia policy\u2019). From White\u2019s earlier \u2018European\u2019 novels (The Living and the Dead<\/em>, The Aunt\u2019s Story<\/em>), through to his fifties masterpieces (The Tree of Man<\/em>, Voss<\/em>, Riders in the Chariot<\/em>), to his \u2018meaty\u2019 novels of the sixties and early seventies (The Vivisector<\/em>, Eye of the Storm<\/em>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But there was more to White than novels. Born in England in 1912, he returned to Australia six months later, but was back in England at thirteen to attend boarding school in Cheltenham. From there to Cambridge, then London, where he (unsuccessfully) started writing plays (including The Ham Funeral<\/em>, which was eventually produced by the University of Adelaide Theatre Guild in 1961). Travels, love affairs, a period in World War II as an RAF intelligence officer in the North African Desert. And through all of this, a love of art, music and theatre that accompanied his early struggles as a writer.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

A Cheery Soul<\/em> started as a short story, a part-portrait of Alex Scott, a gardener who worked one day a week at Dogwoods, White\u2019s and his partner Manoly Lascaris\u2019 Castle Hill property. According to David Marr: \u2018She was fifteen stone of tough old lady with a crew cut, an army hat and a pair of flapping shorts worn in all weathers.\u2019 As with Miss Docker, she was a good talker; a good soul with a good heart, a no-nonsense woman from a now-lost Australia where everyone had a stray aunt or uncle living in their sleep-out. She loved a beer and, according to Marr: \u2018Out of her mouth poured handy hints, maxims, stray facts, anecdotes, recipes, new theories and frank observations.\u2019 In short, perfect Patrick White material. One day, when she was pulling weeds with White, she told him, \u2018I am praying that someday you will write something good.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Scottie\u2019 had suffered a mental breakdown working at David Jones, and had become (ironically) an expert on mental illness (once she told White: \u2018You\u2019re borderline\u2019). She was a Christian, loved reading the Bible, taught Sunday school, sang in the church choir. White called Miss Docker\/Scottie \u2018a wrecker, who first of all almost destroys two private lives, then a home for old people and finally the Church, by her obsession that what she is doing for other people is for their own good.\u2019 White realised this limitless obsession dragged down (as much as raised)  Miss Docker, and the tragedy was she couldn\u2019t see this herself. That none of us, perhaps, can see our own reflected (as White called them) \u2018flaws in the glass\u2019. White saying of his own biography: \u2018I think this book should be called the Monster of All Time. But I am a monster \u2026\u2019 This short story and play, then, are catalogues of Miss Docker\u2019s good deeds. As White provides a chorus of opinions to frame the story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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MRS CUSTANCE:     She [Miss Docker] would be free to come and go. And she\u2019s in such demand \u2013 babysitting \u2013 mending \u2013 we\u2019ll hardly notice she\u2019s here. Poor soul! Nobody in Sarsaparilla ever did so much good \u2026 You\u2019ve got to justify yourself in some way. You can\u2019t just take, take, without you show a little gratitude.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

With the short story lined up for the September 1962 edition of the London Magazine<\/em>, White decided Miss Docker should have a new life on stage. From the beginning, according to Marr, \u2018[White] began to hear Miss Docker speaking in the voice of Nita Pannell, a short, plump and dynamic actress who had made her name as the mother in The One Day of the Year<\/em>.\u2019 White wrote the script in winter 1962, showed it to Pannell and told her, \u2018It will require a virtuoso performance, from comedy to tragedy.\u2019 Pannell wasn\u2019t so sure about Miss Docker, but \u2018[I] finally accepted, knowing full well the enormity of the undertaking \u2013 a completely unloved<\/em> woman.\u2019 White showed the script to director John Tasker, then sent a copy to Harry Medlin at the University of Adelaide Theatre Guild (which had recently staged his first two plays). But this time they decided against its length, large cast and poetic language. White wrote to a friend: \u2018The university scientists who usually take the first plunge with my plays seem to have been shocked by the fact that God plays a certain part in this one \u2026\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Cheery Soul<\/em> eventually premiered with the Union Theatre Repertory Company at the Union Theatre Melbourne on 19 November 1963. Nita Pannell as Miss Docker, spending Act I with a couple called the Custances who have taken pity on her. Moving, in Act II, to the Sundown Home for Old People, as past and present, real and imagined, blur. Finally retreating into God, her last (and perhaps only) real friend, attempting to help Reverend Wakeman salvage his flock, and faith. According to Julian Meyrick: \u2018What drives Miss Docker is a presumptive belief that she knows the will of God. A Cheery Soul<\/em> becomes a slow disabuse of this notion, as people recoil from her with instinctive repugnance and she is increasingly isolated.\u2019 Or, as White put it: \u2018Human behaviour is a series of lunges, of which, it is sometimes sensed, the direction is inevitable.\u2019 Especially for Miss Docker who, in the end, suffers the ultimate humiliation.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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MISS DOCKER:        See that dog? \u2026 He lifted his leg on me. He wet me … I could have loved that dog. And then \u2026 It was a judgement. Judged by a dog \u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

SWAGGIE:                 Why should Gawd judge yer?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

MISS DOCKER:        I said \u2018dog\u2019! Not \u2018God!\u2019 See? \u2026 I never knew before, but \u2018dog\u2019 is \u2018God\u2019 turned round \u2026<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The play\u2019s setting, in the fictional suburb of Sarsaparilla, was in equal parts paean to and condemnation of post-war suburbs spreading beyond Australian cities. City versus country, culture versus vulgarity, realism versus satire, good versus bad (Miss Docker constantly morphing between comedy and tragedy). To watch the play in full, one can feel, in equal parts, White\u2019s love and venom fighting each other (as with her and the heavily symbolic Reverend Wakeman) to the death. Maybe this is what had brought him home from his London life? An attempt to resolve, in his own mind and heart, the contradictions of a new Australia, bubbling away like suet pudding in the asbestos-boxes metastasising across former agricultural land. Like something was being lost as quickly as it was being gained. And maybe Australians themselves picked up on this in 1962: \u2018Halfway through [opening night] I began to smell a greater hostility than I have ever encountered at any of my other plays … Almost all the Melbourne critics condemned it (one of them in one line) saying that I am without wit, humour, love or even liking for human beings …\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Cheery Soul<\/em> was filmed for the BBC in 1966 (one review calling it \u2018tedious\u2019), went on to revivals in 1979, 1992, 2000 and 2018. It\u2019s perhaps the most popular of White\u2019s plays, Miss Docker (after Voss, perhaps) the most powerful of his creations. Because there\u2019s something about a good beginning and a bad ending; about the constant struggle between what\u2019s meant, and how it\u2019s taken; between light and dark, good and evil, body and spirit. Jim Sharman, speaking about White\u2019s plays in 1979, explained: \u2018No one pretends they are easy. They make demands on actors and audiences but the rewards are considerable, like cracking a code.\u2019 The fragmented lines, Greek choruses, hints of modernism and surrealism, and all Australian audiences wanted in 1963 was a good yarn. A few months after the premiere, White wrote to the director that his royalties were \u2018a sad little sum\u2019, but \u2018money or no money, it will remain the best of my four plays to date.\u2019 According to Julian Meyrick, Miss Docker has taken her place beside other \u2018memorable monsters\u2019 in Australian drama such as Monk O\u2019Neil, (Stretch of the Imagination<\/em>) and Jock (The Club<\/em>) but, as Ken Healey\u2019s 1979 review reminded us, \u2018As I have already said, Miss Nevin did not become Miss Docker, but merely impersonated her, leaving the real Miss Docker as an all-too-lively wraith in the imagination of us all.\u2019 Perhaps, in attempting to understand Miss Docker, we\u2019re attempting to understand ourselves. And in the end, this is what makes great theatre.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Cheery Soul<\/em> will run at Holden Street Theatres from Tuesday 24 September to Saturday 12 October 2024. Find more information, or buy your tickets, here<\/a>.<\/h2>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wakefield Press is looking forward to heading to Holden Street Theatres this week to watch ‘surreal satirical masterpiece’ A Cheery Soul by Patrick White, directed by Peter Goers. We’re pleased now to be sharing Stephen Orr‘s programme notes, shared with … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"Read Stephen Orr's programme notes for A CHEERY SOUL, directed by Peter Goers.","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[894],"tags":[895,981,982],"class_list":["post-6302","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-guest-post","tag-guest-post","tag-programme-notes","tag-theatre-notes"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4v1Of-1DE","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6302","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6302"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6302\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6333,"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6302\/revisions\/6333"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}