Oh What A Lovely War! Devised by Joan Littlewood & Theatre Workshop. Directed by Chris Baldock. Musical director: Ewan. Choreographer: Ylaria Rogers. Canberra Repertory Society. Theatre 3, 3 Repertory Lane, Acton. Preview February 22 at 8pm (tickets $35), season February 23-March 10, tickets $45/$38. canberrarep.org.au.
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In the year that marks the centenary of the end of World War I, Oh What A Lovely War! is a timely show to mount. Canberra Repertory Society's final production for its 2017-18 season is this 1963 satirical musical devised by Joan Littlewood and the Theatre Workshop in Britain.
Director Chris Baldock says, "It's a satirical take on World War I that was their biggest success."
And while it's more than 50 years old, Oh What A Lovely War! has endured: it was adapted into a 1969 film directed by Richard Attenborough and it's had frequent revivals.
The show uses songs of the period and sketches with the actors in Pierrot costumes and makeup to highlight the absurdity and horror of war, juxtaposed with slides showing newspaper headlines and photographs as real-life reference points.
"There are a lot of hats," Baldock says, as the members of the ensemble cast - six male, six female, aged from 15 to mid-40s - uses headpieces and accents to switch between various characters - a British colonel, the German Kaiser, ordinary soldiers, people at home.
Sometimes, Baldock says, the mood seems relatively light, as when one young girl looking at a casualty list doesn't understand the realities of the situation and goes back to her sewing duties, cueing the tongue-twisting number Sister Susie's Sewing Shirts for Soldiers.
At other times, it's more overtly poignant, as when some soldiers are enduring the horrors of the front line and a woman moves among them singing the patriotic number Keep the Home Fires Burning.
Baldock says he came to Oh What A Lovely War! relatively late - Rep asked him to step in when the original director had to withdraw.
"They didn't ask me to do it until November ...I hadn't read it, hadn't seen it, hadn't seen the film."
He also had a busy schedule lined up in early 2018 - he's currently also directing 42nd Street for Free-Rain and When The Rain Stops Falling (which he's also acting in) for his own company, Mockingbird Productions, and taking on a small acting role in Supa's upcoming production of Fame. Not to mention teaching a lot of classes at his acting school. But he still agreed to take on Oh What A Lovely War! despite having far less time to prepare than he normally would and having to find a new cast ("I didn't want to inherit a cast ... I have to have my own vision") and, substantially, a new production team.
"I wanted to get them out of the pickle," he says. He was grateful to Rep for giving him his first opportunity in Canberra when he moved here in 2017. He directed a well-received, award-winning production of Arthur Miller's play A View from the Bridge for Rep last year. While he had long been part of the theatre scene in Melbourne, he wasn't known here but successfully made his pitch for the Miller production. It quickly established him in the Canberra theatre community.
"They took me in sight unseen and had a lot of faith in me ... It made such a difference to me," he says.
