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SHOW PROVES AN EMBARRASSMENT
A bold prediction last year from the Independent’s Kathy Marks:
The Australian government would prefer the world to forget about David Hicks, an Adelaide man detained at Guantanamo Bay. That is unlikely to happen, with the opening of a theatrical work highlighting his plight at the Sydney Opera House.
Honour Bound, by a leading Australian director, Nigel Jamieson, was created in conjunction with Mr Hicks’ father, Terry, and stepmother, Bev ...
The show will prove a severe embarrassment for Australia ...
But the show turned out to be more of an embarrassment for its producers:
What hurt was the failure of their two bigger shows, the David Hicks-inspired Honour Bound and the drama, Eldorado, to attract audiences.
“In retrospect, they weren’t production failures so much as victims of our expectations,” [executive producer Stephen] Armstrong says.
Yes. You expected people to turn up. But, despite rave reviews ...
The best show I have seen so far this year is HONOUR BOUND. Reading all the harping about the theatre on this site there seems to be only one other entry re HONOUR BOUND. Not surprising really - it gets rave reviews but I saw it with an audience of 25.
Just a timing problem, according to Armstrong:
“We were one-and-a-half steps ahead of public interest (in Hicks),” he says. “If the show had been on five months later it would have sold out.”
Interesting that those rave reviews did nothing to generate public interest.
The real issue is that the person who could have made a popular stage show about Hicks, and a musical at that, is busy working (I’ve heard) on a musical version of Young Frankenstein, since his previous hit show just closed.
“Springtime, bin Laden, and Kandahar….”
Heh…nice cross-reference, Mark. Too bad these blinkered idiots were serious, unlike The Producers.
Doncha just love the port-side use of “honour” to describe a ranting, fat-assed, anti-semitic, theocrat wannnabe? Kinda makes you wonder what life in Southpawstan would be like, eh?
Posted by Jeffersonian on 2007 04 23 at 02:13 PM • permalink“In retrospect, they weren’t production failures so much as victims of our expectations,” [executive producer Stephen] Armstrong says.
“The band’s appeal is becoming more selective…”
“The Boston gig’s been cancelled… I wouldn’t worry about it, it’s not a big college town.”
-Ian Faith, manager, Spinal Tap.
“We were one-and-a-half steps ahead of public interest (in Hicks),” he says. “If the show had been on five months later it would have sold out.”
The problem wasn’t timing. The problem was the theatre itself. If they simply picked a venue with seating for 25, they would have had their sell out.
Posted by tim maguire on 2007 04 23 at 06:21 PM • permalinkNot enough sequins, clearly.
Mind you, they certainly achieved the severe embarrassment thing.
Posted by Margos Maid on 2007 04 23 at 06:23 PM • permalinkThe concept of “sold out” has been taken out of context.
Obviously, this drama was staged in a theatre that was too large for the projected audience. If they had chosen a more appropriate venue, they could have easily sold out.
I have a shoebox that I can rent to the producers - guaranteed sell out every night!
Posted by mr creosote on 2007 04 23 at 06:27 PM • permalinkSimple! The organisers can put the farce on again in 5 months time if they have such confidence.
Myself I couldn’t think of anything worse than watching a bunch of lefty twits prancing around in orange jumpsuits telling me how Hicks is a hero.
Funny thing is that within their own tight little circle of moonbats the performers, organisers and producers get told they are extremely talented. Outside of that sheltered life none of them could hold down any sort of job in the private sector.Posted by Hank Reardon on 2007 04 23 at 06:29 PM • permalinkI can’t wait for Dave to get home. And the party we’re gonna have when he’s released? Whoooeee, gonna make the last ALP election victory party look like a valium convention. There’s gonna be topless chicks, booze, drugs, loud music and INFIDELS! Hundreds and hundreds of INFIDELS!!
Dave will appreciate the gesture I’m sure.Way off topic. But…
The news from Russia is - Yeltsout.Posted by SwinishCapitalist on 2007 04 23 at 08:03 PM • permalink“In retrospect, they weren’t production failures so much as victims of our expectations,” [executive producer Stephen] Armstrong says.
Self-delusion is an amazing thing. If those involved mixed with people other than their 25 friends in that audience, they might gain a small inkling of what the majority actually thinks of David Hicks.
A severe embarrassment to Australia? It’s more a case of embarrassment for everyone concerned in this production, most particularly Terry Hicks who should be ashamed both of himself as well as his son.
Like in Waylon Jennings’s song, the villains have turned into heroes and sometimes it seems as if we really are singing our song to the deaf men and dancing our dance to the blind.
Theres only so much variation you can do on the Tyburn jig anyway…..
Posted by thefrollickingmole on 2007 04 23 at 08:47 PM • permalinkMight be a revelation for these pretentious fools who consider themselves to be on the cutting edge of the Yartz.
Nobody gives a rat’s arse about Mo Dawood.
Posted by Pedro the Ignorant on 2007 04 23 at 09:42 PM • permalink#7. “The band’s appeal is becoming more selective…”
Sounds like the Dixie Chicks, too.
“A band statement said the changes were to ‘accommodate demand’.”
BBC story from 2006
The Dixie Chicks are a parody band, too, right? I just wasn’t sure how that story got on the news pages.
Of course the play was a crock.
However it was a triumph for writer/producer, Nigel Jamieson who cleaned up at the Sydney Theatre Awards winning Best Mainstream Production and Best New Australian Work for Honour Bound.
Best of all Jamieson has been paid out with Jew money - being awarded $35,000 by the Sidney Myer Foundation.
Sidney Myer was the Russian immigrant who escaped the pogroms to set up the Myer retail corporation.
You couldn’t make this stuff up…
Posted by Margos Maid on 2007 04 23 at 10:51 PM • permalinkWell, I’m enbarrassed.
I’m embarrassed that fellow Australians would actually produce this fetid pile of propaganda and describe it as entertainment.
And I’m enbarrassed that anyone turned up to see it.Ten years ago I was driving cabs and picked up a fellow whose father was an artist with an entry in the Archibald Prize.
His father was moving overseas because of what he described as a type of leftist/homosexual mafia controlling the Yartz in Australia, making it virtually impossible for any artiste who didn’t fit into that scene to be successful.
Then again, his entry was a finalist in the Archibald, so he wasn’t being too badly done by.Maybe if they produced the show as a musical?
Posted by The_Real_JeffS on 2007 04 23 at 10:58 PM • permalinkHonour Bound? I thought that was the play about the filthy slut they tied up and beheaded in the town square after she was found guilty of being raped? Or was it the touching story of the 12 year old Taliban Deathbot who beheaded the spy? It’s a nightmare keeping up with all these Islamo Blammo Blockbusters.
Posted by Infidel Tiger on 2007 04 23 at 11:00 PM • permalinkThe producers missed an opportunity to show their support for Oz-Qaeda AND strike a blow against global warming:
HICKS ON ICE!
Posted by richard mcenroe on 2007 04 23 at 11:02 PM • permalinkAnd even though Ann J has done it implicitly in #25, I can’t pass up the opportunity to channel Pauline Kael explicitly (or perhaps an apocryphal Pauline Kael):
“Stephen Armstrong couldn’t understand why the audience wasn’t bigger. After all, everyone he knows thinks David Hicks is a hero.”
(Of course, Richard Nixon won in one of the biggest landslides in American presidential history, which is not mentioned specifically in the linked article above. It does, however, make you wonder if Ms. Kael got out enough. You might wonder the same thing about Mr. Armstrong.)
#35 - I thought Hicks had been on ice for the last five years, richard.
Posted by SwinishCapitalist on 2007 04 23 at 11:15 PM • permalinkPerhaps Mr. [sic] Armstrong will put his money where his mouth is, then, and restage the production 5 months from now.
Posted by andycanuck on 2007 04 23 at 11:21 PM • permalinkDon’t leave us 1.6 - we need your voice of reason.
Posted by Margos Maid on 2007 04 23 at 11:35 PM • permalinkWhen you combine the delusional self-importance of theatre/dance luvvies with the grant-fed mindset of moonbats, you obviously reach a degree of detachment from reality not normally found this side of an event horizon.
Melbournians will remember that, some years ago, a bunch of ageing baby boomer lefties staged a musical based on the works of their intellectual patron saint Manning Clark. None of these people had a clue about the mechanics of putting on a commercial show, or a show that more than 30 people might want to see, let alone pay to see. The show sank without a trace, but to this day, they still babble the same delusional rationalizations as the Hicks crew.
Ah yes! Manning Clark’s Greatest Shits - not quite as popular as a pork chop at a bar mitzvah.
Posted by SwinishCapitalist on 2007 04 23 at 11:51 PM • permalinkYou lot are being very cruel about Honour Bound and its participants.
So what if no one went? So what if it didn’t make money? The creation of art does not require a purpose. It does not require anyone to even see it. It certainly isn’t required to make money, which is such a fascist concept.
No, the purpose of art such as this is to provide an entry on the CV’s of all that participated. That way, when they apply for their next yarts wanker grant, they can point to all the pointless productions that they have been involved with and make a case for collecting yet more funds from the taxpayer.
Producers, writers, director and actors can all submit themselves for an award of some sort.
Government bodies that have been setup to disburse taxpayers funds to yartists can claim that they gave grants to x+1 number of productions that year (thus justifying their continued existance).
When at parties, all concerned can boast, “I was in four productions last year”.
“Oh, what were they?”
“Well, I was a swamp lily in Govart’s production of ‘Licking frogs arses’, then I was the understudy for the goat in ‘Dance to the sound of vivisection’, I was the lead in ‘Under the cap’, a one person show about a mute mushroom collector who gets lost in the woods one day (it’s an allegory about economic rationalism and the powerlessness of shopkeepers), and finally I was a guard in ‘Honour Bound’. My role was to bring David hicks a tray of donuts every 15 minutes”.
“Oooh, aren’t you just so arty darling”.
Posted by mr creosote on 2007 04 24 at 01:14 AM • permalinkPerhaps, if the lead actor lopped off his old feller during each performance (would require a new lead each night) then more people would turn up.
Posted by Jack Lacton on 2007 04 24 at 01:16 AM • permalinkGive it some real edge and abbreviate a member of the audience! “And tonight’s lucky seat number is…”
Posted by SwinishCapitalist on 2007 04 24 at 01:22 AM • permalink#46 - Insert Polish sausage joke here.
Posted by Infidel Tiger on 2007 04 24 at 01:29 AM • permalinkOf all the genital lopping frivolities I’ve heard of, the story of Geoff Huish is without doubt the finest. This is a Welshman that doesn’t welch on a bet.
Posted by Infidel Tiger on 2007 04 24 at 01:36 AM • permalinkOne-and-a-half steps? That’s a fairly unbalanced position to assume.
Posted by flying pigs over mecca on 2007 04 24 at 02:19 AM • permalinkO/T
Just listening to Kevin Rudd being interviewed and answering listener calls
Carbon emission trading scheme coming up
A couple of quotes from Algore of course
Now it’s down to personal sacrifices for GW! No toilet paper suggestions though
His favourite website - Youtube!
As for Honour Bound - looking forward to seeing it in 5 months when all of us are suddenly interested in Hicksie again
Posted by aussiemagpie on 2007 04 24 at 02:35 AM • permalinkO/T
More from Kevvie
The GST rate will NOT rise - “Over my dead body” he said
Posted by aussiemagpie on 2007 04 24 at 02:43 AM • permalink#49 IT
#46 - Insert Polish sausage joke here.
Why bother? Nothing can top seeing the words “insert Polish sausage”.
Posted by flying pigs over mecca on 2007 04 24 at 03:08 AM • permalink#46
Who wants to be the restaurant w/ that on it’s reputation.Posted by TattooedIntellectual on 2007 04 24 at 03:23 AM • permalinkMargo’s, Tim G blogg site is a little well dead, I don’t think anyone would like to hear me sing in there. You guys don’t mind my typing errors. I think I’d drive them up the wall.
Tim Blair, I think it’s fate, so does your mum Mrs Blair. (I’ll play gold with her, I’m not good but hey!) Otherwise, I’m going to ignore you in here and pretend you are Tim from Birrel st Bondi Junction or I’ll post away and pretend you’re not my lover or gorgeous husband or boyfriend or friend or anything else.
#58 - That’s the spirit 1.618. He knows your available, maybe it’s time to play hard to get? Besides, there are heaps of well dressed, handsome men in Sydney. I saw it with my own eyes when I drove through Paddington. They even have an annual parade, where they float all the single men around town. All the families come out to look at them and wish them well in their endeavours to snare a lady.
Posted by Infidel Tiger on 2007 04 24 at 04:16 AM • permalink#50 Maybe it’s just me, but that’s the funniest thing I’ve read all day.
Posted by Nilknarf Arbed on 2007 04 24 at 04:37 AM • permalinkI’m with CB on this one, break out a couple of slabs, the strippers and the bundy, ‘our Hicksy’ is coming home. Hell, I’ll even buy the first beer. Now who bought the rope? Hope we can find a tree branch strong enough.
Wouldn’t want to offend the greenies or anything.
Oh, and by the way, the Yarts can get f*cked.You back home, 185600?
If so, welcome, and good timing, just on Anzac day.
Posted by Pedro the Ignorant on 2007 04 24 at 09:55 AM • permalink
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I’m horrid at/in math. If someone here can assist, please.
I’d like to know traveling at a torrid rate of “one-and-a-half steps”, how many steps “ahead of public interest”, could one travel in “five months”?