Fortunes of the Fortune Theatre
DUNEDIN’S Fortune Theatre is named after Philip Henslowe’s square theatre in London, built 1600, burnt 1621 — living up to its name. Now our own Fortune has closed, after over 40 years, a misfortune for the city. I used to review all its productions for
ACT magazine. Here are some golden memories.
Dracula
Soon after coming here, I saw the Fortune company perform in the Athenaeum. Dracula. I’ll not forget how the evil count raised his arms to spread his cape (black with scarlet lining), like a huge bat. Then we all ducked in the darkness as bats appeared to fly rapidly over our heads, from the stage up the middle of the rows. The bats were made of heavy cloth, and pulled along a wire, which made the wings flap, uncomfortably close overhead. Splendid faking!
Usher
Up the road, in the former Methodist Trinity building, another Gothic horror play was based on Poe’s ghoulish tale Fall
of the House of Usher. It ended with Usher’s ‘‘house’’ (gothick castle) appearing to crumble, fall and crash. Lurid lights flashed, strobes worked overtime. The actual fall took minutes. This cheeky, corny homemade faking is one thing which for me makes theatre theatre. Movies, with their enormous budgets and pedantic realism, don’t excite me.
Shakespeare
Those two plays were quite free of profundity. But the company achieved that too, in another venue, the Regent. Enlisting Elric Hooper, then on his way back to the Court Theatre, they staged an utterly memorable Macbeth. Elric built the production round a vast steep ramp. Macbeth, late on in his progress to damnation, walked down that ramp, in an aimless slouch, to say the immortal words at us:/ Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,/ Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,/ To the last syllable of recorded time;/ And all our yesterdays have lighted fools/ The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!/ Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,/ That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,/ And then is heard no more. It is a tale/ Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,/ Signifying nothing./ As he walked down at us, headon, I flinched from the futility of (his) life. The Fortune did Shakespeare proud that day. Other Shakespeares Among other Shakespeares I remember Much Ado about
Nothing, in modern dress; set as if during WW2 — wilfully distorted ending, but memorable: the airraid warning sirens sounding at the ending took me back to that awful sound in my London childhood.
Other kinds
They did other playwrights proud, too. Comedy after comedy: Noel Coward, Private
Lives. Roger Hall, series of hits. Pantomimes: Roger’s
Cinderella. Plays for children: Alan Bennett’s Wind in the
Willows. An Australian season: David Williamson, their Roger Hall. Oneperson shows, like Elric Hooper’s Cole Porter evening. As for NZ plays,
Foreskin’s Lament (sellout because it explains rugby to itself); and The Two Tigers, about Katherine Mansfield and John Middleton Murry. Those were the days!
The four wise men
They were the days of the Fortune’s four stagestruck founders: David Carnegie, Huntly Elliot, Alex Gilchrist, and Murray Hutchinson. There had been professional theatre in Dunedin before, many times. Now that makes me hope the closing of the Fortune Theatre will not end the story. Theatre itself will continue, somewhere. Other buildings, other spaces, exist. Is it definitely the end of the building and the company?