Pamela Rabe – Doing Time On Stage
On Parole from her jail role, Pamela Rabe finds a freedom in performing in Beckett Triptych, writes Tim Lloyd Pamela Rabe would be one of the more unlikely stars of…
Pamela Rabe on Wentworth and The Glass Menagerie
Pamela Rabe has built a reputation for playing the “heavy” roles in the theatrical canon – The Wicked Witch of the West, even Richard III – but for sheer malevolence, nothing tops playing Joan “The Freak” Ferguson, the sadistic black-gloved jailer of the rebooted Prisoner series Wentworth, airing on Foxtel.
Rabe, who is preparing to play a monster of a different stripe in Belvoir’s coming production of The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams, has recently finished filming the third season of the series in Melbourne.
“I’ve known Maggie Kirkpatrick [the original “Freak” from the ’80s soapie] for a long time now,” Rabe says. “We did a tour of The Beauty Queen of Leenane for the Sydney Theatre Company playing a mother and daughter. So there was some serendipity in me being asked to take up the gloves.”
On screen, Rabe lives up to Prison Officer Joan Ferguson’s unofficial title. “I felt like I had to earn that nickname,” Rabe says. “When the audience knows you’re going to get nasty, it’s all about working your way to that destination as interestingly as possible. It’s a great challenge.” (more…)
MAKE IT SNAPPY – Pamela Rabe & Philip Quast about “His Girl Friday”
EXTRA, EXTRA: READ ALL ABOUT A NEW VERSION OF HIS GIRL FRIDAY, WRITES SIMON PLANT
NOBODY says “Stop the presses!” any more. But they do in the theatre. In His Girl Friday, hardboiled newspaper editor Walter Bums leans into an upright telephone and barks out the immortal words: “Listen to me, I want you to tear out the whole front page. That’s what I said, the whole front page!”
In the same play, ace reporter Hildy Johnson tells her boss: “The paper’ll have to learn to do without me . . . I’m through … peeking through keyholes, running after fire engines, waking people up in the middle of the night.”
“It is language from another era,” actor Pamela Rabe tells me, “but it is delicious.”
Rabe plays Johnson and Philip Quast is Burns in a new Melbourne Theatre Company production of His Girl Friday. And meeting these expert actors at Little Press, a bar on Flinders St, they look the part — as if they’ve just walked out of a Chicago newsroom in the 1930s.
More importantly, Rabe and Quast sound right They’re relishing the rapid-fire repartee penned by former Chicago journalists Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, and finding the pace that powered Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell in the celebrated 1940 Hollywood version.
Quast says of Howard Hawks’ famous screwball comedy: “Its fast, all right At the time of the movie, it must have been a bit shocking to audiences. They’d never really experienced that before.”
Rabe agrees: “I think what the writers wanted to replicate was the sound of a newsroom. That cacophony of typewriting and chatter. Today, of course, you’d say it goes at the speed of tweets.”
Sounds like verbal ping pong …
Rabe: “More like tennis, really.”
Quast: “Yeah. There are definite baseline rallies.
“Then we move to the net where there are volleys … and that’s a different rhythm. Boom, boom, boom.
“Someone scores a point. Next serve.”
Rabe: “Stretching the tennis analogy, there are times when there are almost 15 people on stage and then it’s not singles or doubles … its a very crowded court.” (more…)
Artworks: Grey Gardens
One of the most extraordinary documentary films ever made is Grey Gardens. This was made in 1975 by the brothers David and Albert Maysles. Grey Gardens achieved cult status because…
Three Chatty Women With Style
Three tall women discuss acting, memories and the pointlessness of critics.
Three women are having a natter around a restaurant table. Death is on the agenda. Ruth Cracknell, Pamela Rabe and Pippa Williamson are discussing the recent death of Williamson’s cat. The conversation moves to a dying man’s final words, cremation and fear of death. It’s a way for us break the ice.
They are all appearing in Edward Albee’s play Three Tall Women. It was typecasting. “I’m the short one. I used to be, and probably still am, five feet eight and three quarters in the old term,” says Ruth. Pippa is: “Five, 10 and a half, though I’m probably shrinking.” Pamela: “Just under six foot. I’m not aware of it until people comment. And when I see photographs of myself.”
Ruth says she wouldn’t be short for quids. Her height didn’t damage her career even in the early days. “It was great for Greek tragedy and Shakespeare. Great for radio.”
“You played the seven dwarves didn’t you, Ruth?” Pamela asks.
“Yes, I played Grumpy.”
The character of the matriach played by Ruth in Three Tall Women is inspired by Albee’s dislike for his adoptive mother. But, much to his surprise, audiences have found her fascinating and even warmed to her.
Are memories of family difficult to communicate to others or were his feelings hard to translate? Pippa says everybody’s stories about their lives are fiction.
“It’s how you frame it. How you see it is not necessarily how somebody else saw it,” Pippa says. “My aunts and uncles have a totally different view of my grandmother than my mother has. Each of them had a subjective view of their mother … When you see it in the context of her life, you see what made her who she became.”
Pamela continues that thought: “And that in itself becomes a form of acceptance on behalf of the writer — that he should even choose to investigate what has gone into making this woman.” (more…)
Red-Hot Play And A Red-Hot Talent
On June 6, Neil Simon’s much-acclaimed play Lost In Yonkers opens at Sydney’s Theatre Royal. DEBORAH McINTOSH spoke to its star Pamela Rabe.
Pamela Rabe came to Australia from Canada in 1983, almost fresh out of acting school. “I remember at the time not knowing what I would be cast in and thinking ‘At least, maybe, I’ll be all right for a Neil Simon play’. And the funny thing is I’ve done everything but!”
Until now, that is. Rabe is to star in Neil Simon’s Lost in Yonkers, with Ruth Cracknell and Robert Grubb. The play won Simon the 1991 Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award for Best Play, and ripping reviews like “Neil Simon’s laughter and tears have come together in a new emotional truth” and “The last of the red-hot playwrights just got hotter”. (more…)
Story of A Female Love Affair
Suzy Freeman-Greene reports on the highly successful play about author, Gertrude Stein, and her lover, Alice B. Toklas.
Gertrude Stein was an irrepressible woman. Mirthful and dry-witted, she reigned for 40 years over the literary and art circles of Paris. Her friends included Picasso and Matisse; her protege was Ernest Hemingway. She was brilliant, snobbish, vain and warm-hearted.
But, as famous people often do, Stein drew her strength and inspiration from a seemingly ordinary morta. Alice B Toklas, was plain, ascerbic, slightly paranoid and totally committed to Stein whom she recognised as a genius. The two lived together from 1907 until 1948 in their legendary apartment at 27 Rue de Sleurus.
Pam & Miriam (Colorised Edit) | Original Photo by Doris Thomas/Fairfax Media
According to British actor, Miriam Margoyles, who is in Australia to play Stein in ‘Gertrude Stein and a Companion‘, theirs was a true-love story. “Everybody wants a wife — and Gertrude had one,” she said.
As much a tribute to Toklas as Stein, the two-woman play has been acclaimed world-wide since it was first performed in 1984. Margoyle has played Stein in Britain, the United States, Canada, and now Melbourne. Pamela Rabe is the new Alice B Toklas. (more…)
Alice Toklas Get Her Due
Miriam Margoyles and Pamela Rabe, who star in ‘Gertrude Stein and a Companion’, the play about the American couple who were once the toast of the Paris literati, are keen to set the record straight: Alice B. Toklas, the often overlooked half of the relationship, was no lapdog.
According to Ms Rabe, the Melbourne actress who plays Alice in what the pair believe is the definitive version of the couple’s life: “The public perception is that Gertrude was the forceful one, the mover, the doer, and Alice was just the shadow in the background, hanging off the glory of Gertrude. I think that those that were close to them were aware that the balance was slightly different.”
The willowy Ms Rabe and, in her own words, the “short, fat and Jewish” Ms Margolyes — who have been described as a couple as incongruous as Stein and Toklas themselves — were preparing for the play’s Melbourne opening (tonight, at the Universal Theatre, Fitzroy). after a successful Sydney season. Despite its title, they said ‘Gertrude Stein and a Companion’ was essentially about Alice and her crucial role in the relationship.
Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas’ 40-year relationship began early this century. Gertrude, a writer, would “hold court” with Paris’ “literati and glitterati” — Picasso, Hemingway, T.S. Eliot, “anyone who was anyone” — while Alice, an intellectual in her own right, would entertain the wives.
“Gertrude was a wonderful self-publicist,” Ms Rabe said. “When Alice met her, her bells rang and she made an instant decision that this was someone who needed her and vice versa and she then set about devoting her life to making Gertrude possible; to making Gertrude happy, secure; making it possible for her to write and for her to hold court… the only credit, the only kudos that she needed was from Gertrude.” (more…)