Aussie Theatre
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Thursday, September 14, 2006. Opening Night Performance. Review by CHRISTINA CASS
Picasso is a name familiar to just about anyone in the modern industrialized world. Very little, however, is known of his long-term models, muses and lovers. Every artist has his/her muse and Picasso's gargantuan sexual appetite consumed many. Brian McAvera, author of Picasso's Women , invites us to experience eight women's lives spent with the great master. The production I saw, directed by Miki Oikawa, concentrates on two of the eight original monologues: Fernande Olivier and Dora Maar.
Fernande (1881-1966), Picasso's first ‘love', reputedly inspired his Rose Period which lifted him from his Blue Period. (Now that's some muse!) She was his mistress from 1904-1914 but prior to that, a successful young businesswoman. Annabel Pemberton plays Fernande with such grace and subtlety that it is quite obvious she must be an artist's model. Portrayed with dancing eyes and coquettish smiles, the audience can understand why Picasso whisked her from her livelihood of modelling for many other famous Parisian artists and claimed her as his own. Literally barricading her jealously from the outside world. I ask, “What makes a young, independent, beautiful woman allow herself to be eclipsed by such a man?” As Pemberton's 30-minute monologue unfolds, we see her attraction to immortality – but selling one's soul can leave an empty shell. “It is better to dead than forgotten,” to which Fernande replies in her memoir, “Ah, yes Pablo, but it is far worse to be dead and forgotten.”
After tiring of his 10-year childless union with Fernande, Picasso had many lovers – but perhaps his most formidable match was Dora Maar, played by Frances Marrington, whom he was with from 1935-1945. She was 29 and he was 56 – already a god in his art world but Dora was an artistic force in her own right during the Surrealist movement. Travelling as an equal in Man Ray's circle, this young photographer set her sights on Picasso and was determined to make him beg for her. Marrington is ideally cast, giving the audience a powerful view of what a man-eater must have looked and moved like during that time and her similarly large, almond-shaped eyes are starkly portrayed in Picasso's Weeping Woman series.
It's very difficult to escape subtleties in the intimate Butterfly Club, and both Pemberton and Marrington use this small ‘black box' atmosphere with great talent. Body and facial movements are paramount in these monologues to keep the audience engrossed and are not lost as we travel through their oral memoirs and ultimate pain.
Yes, Dora, too, was cast aside after 10 years – but this time Picasso felt perhaps she was getting a bit too clingy and jealous of his affairs, so naturally he committed her to an asylum and subjected her to shock treatments. Incidentally, this seemed to be acceptable behaviour among Parisian artists. Fellow ‘god-like' artist Auguste Rodin's did the same to his equally brilliant and subsequently jealous lover, Camille Claudel. What is it about boys threatened by powerful women – or women they just can't handle anymore? Oh! I know! Let's send her to the looney bin – done and dusted.
But I digress.
In sum, if the National Gallery of Victoria's Picasso: Love & War , left you feeling a bit flat – biographically unfulfilled on the part of Dora Maar – see this show. See it anyway, it's a unique opportunity to flesh out the women behind the myth. |