Barry Humphries and Patrick White - Essay Example

Sana Osman English 21 October 2008 Barry Humphries and Patrick White. Theatre in Australia features stories of many entrepreneurs, actors, directors, playwrights and others. Innumerable performances have captivated and enchanted the Australian audiences for many years. There have been various performers from Australia and other countries, from small-scale community based plays to large scale productions featuring amateur and professional theatre groups. Two notable individuals who contributed to Australian theatre are Patrick Victor Martindale White and Barry Humphries. John Barry Humphries is a satirist, a character actor and a comedian. His best known roles are Dame Edna Everage, a Melbourne housewife, and Sir Les Patterson, a foul-mouthed Australian cultural representative to Britain. He was not only an actor but also a script writer, a film producer, an award winning writer, a star of London's West End musical theatre, and a landscape painter. Another noted name in Australian theatre was Patrick Victor Martindale White, also known as Patrick White. White was an author who was considered a major English-language novelist. During his career he published eight plays, twelve novels and two short story collections. "His fiction freely employs shifting narrative vantagepoints and a stream of consciousness technique" (Wikipedia 2007). He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1973. Barry Humphries was born on 17 February 1934 in Melbourne, Australia. He is a noted Australian actor and comedian. Humphries nick name was 'Bazza'. Other than acting Barry Humphries also wrote comic strips. His comic strip Barry McKenzie about Australian living in London appeared in the magazine Private Eye. His nick name Bazza gave Australian slang wide distribution, particularly jokes on drinking and its results, much of which was created by Humphries himself. His childhood set the stage for his eventual career of an actor. Barry's father spent little time with him so he spent a lot of his time playing disguise in his backyard. His parent called him Sunny Sam. During his teens he began to go against the constraints of conservative suburban life and became artistic. When he was nine Humphries' mother gave all his books to the Salvation Army. This event led him to becoming a collector of rare books, a reader, a theatre fan and a painter. He dressed in a black cloak and black homburg and invented his first character, "Dr Aaron Azimuth". Barry was educated at Camberwell Grammar School. He was also sent to Melbourne Grammar School where he matriculated with excellent results in Art and English. Later he spent two years studying law, fine arts and philosophy at the University of Melbourne. During this time he became a part of Dada, the deconstructive and absurdist art movement. The Dadaist performances and pranks have become a part of Australian folklore. After leaving university he joined the newly formed Melbourne theatre company. It was now that he created the first version of his most famous character Edna Everage. The old fashioned housewife originally created as a character of Australian suburban narrow-mindedness, evolved over forty years to become a flamboyantly dressed, internationally acclaimed star, Dame Edna Everage. Humphries' other humorous characters include, nephew of Dame Edna, Barry McKenzie which went on to become a legendary comic strip hero. Sir Les Patterson, who has not only contributed to the Australian vernacular but also borrowed from it. An underground film-maker from the 1960's Martin Agrippa, a trade union official Lance Boyle, a failed tycoon Owen Steele and an art salesman Morrie O'Connor. Later, Humphries moved to Sydney and joined Sydney's Philip Street Revue Theatre. He appeared in Australia's first ever production of Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot, as Estragon. In the 1960s Humphries settled in London, where he became friends with leading artists from the British comedy scene including Peter Cook, Jonathan Miller, Willie Rushton and the like. While in London he contributed to the comedy magazine Private Eye, his most famous work being a cartoon strip The Wonderful World of Barry McKenzie. In the late 1960s the book version of the comic strip was published, which was banned in Australia for some time. His first break in Britain came with his role of the undertaker Mr Sowerberry for the London stage production Oliver! In 1967, he got his first film role, a cameo, in the movie Bedazzled. In the late 60s he moved to television where he contributed to BBC-TVs popular show The Late Show. Humphries found his interest in stage revues, in which he performed as Edna Everage and other characters. His first satirical revue was 'A Nice Night's Entertainment', in 1962. In 1968 he returned to Australia to stage his one-man revue Just A Show. This production also toured London which led to a short-lived BBC-TV series The Barry Humphries Scandals. In 1970 Edna Everage made her movie debut, The Naked Bunyip, a John B. Murray production. In 1971 and 1972 he created a film version of the Barry McKenzie cartoons, The Adventures of Barry McKenzie, which also featured Humphries, who played three different parts. The movie became a huge hit with the audiences. Another significant artistic production, was the collaboration between Australian composer Nigel Butterly and Humphries, they produced a collection of poems. It had poems with titles such as "Histoire du Lamington" and "Morceau en forme de 'meat pie" (St. Pierre 79). During the late Sixties Humphries became addicted to alcohol and his family feared it would cost him his career and his life. His drinking led to his parents admitting him to a private hospital to 'dry out'. Since then he restrained from alcohol completely. In the 1980s and the 1990s Humphries did many film roles like Shock Treatment which was after the infamous Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band which was released in 1977. In 1987 he featured as Les Patterson, in the disastrous Les Patterson Saves the World. His role in Dr Fischer of Geneva as Richard Deane was one of his most successful. Later he did a cameo in the miniseries Selling Hitler as Rupert Murdoch. Humphries also featured in the 2003 animated hit film Finding Nemo. Humphries' interest had always been one-man satirical stage shows, in which he appeared as Edna Everage and many other character creations. There a very few comedians who can be compared to him on the basis of his long career with Dame Edna Everage, whose popularity remains consistent even after fifty years. In the beginning of his career Humphries faced a lot of criticism and stiff resistance from the audience. He finally broke through with his London production in 1976, Housewife, Superstar! at the Apollo Theatre. Its success in Australia and Britain took Humphries to try his luck in New York in 1977, but it proved to be a disaster. Barry Humphries finally fulfilled his dream of becoming successful in the United States of America. He took Deme Edna: The Royal Tour to Broadway in 2000, where it became a smash hit and got enthusiastic reviews, which resulted in Humphries winning the Special Tony Award for a Live Theatrical Event. He also won two awards for Best Play and Best Actor at the National Broadway Theatre Awards in 2001. Humphries is also an author of many books. He has also written two autobiographies. His published work includes two novels and a treatise on Chinese drama. Apart from this he has also written many plays. Barry also made dozens of recordings. In 1993, he won the J.R. Ackerley prize for his biography More Please. Humphries recent autobiography is called My Life As Me: A Memoir. Patrick Victor Martindale White, an Australian short story writer, novelist, and a playwright. He was born on 28th May 1912. He is regarded as one of the major English-language writers of the 20th century. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1973. He published 12 novels, two short story collections and eight plays. White's novel VOSS written in 1957, a symbolic story of a doomed journey into the Australian desert was an international break through. His style of writing freely uses a consciousness technique. Partick had to wait for a long time until his idea of Australian middle class was accepted in his own country. "I would like to believe in the myth that we grow wiser with age. In a sense my disbelief is wisdom. Those of a middle generation, if charitable or sentimental, subscribe to the wisdom myth, while the callous see us as dispensable objects, like broken furniture or dead flowers. For the young we scarcely exist unless we are unavoidable members of the same family, farting, slobbering, perpetually mislaying teeth and bifocals." (White, Patrick 11). Patrick White was born to Australian parents in London and spent early years of life in Australia at a large sheep farm owned by his father, Victor Martindale. Since his childhood White showed interest in writing and his first work was published in Sydney Sunday Times in the children's page, when he was nine. He was later sent to Cheltenham College, in 1925, for four years and he hated the experience. After returning to Australia he worked on a sheep station, where he wrote novels. He studied French and German literature in England at King's College, Cambridge, from 1932 to 1935. White's first love affair was at King's College where he was in love with a young man who had come to King's to become an Anglican priest. While at Cambridge White's first collection of poetry, The Ploughman and Other Poems, was published. During that time he also wrote a play and was part of an amateur theatre group. In 1935 he received his Bachelor of Art and settled in London. Later he wrote two more play and also found a publisher for Happy Valley, which was published in 1939. The novel did well in London but poorly in Australia. However, Happy Valley won him the Australian Literature Society's gold medal. During the end of the 1930s White spent his time in the United States where he published his next novel The Living and the Dead. He later returned to London and joined the Royal Air Force, he was then posted in the Middle East. "While in the Middle East, he had an affair with a Greek Army officer, Manoly Lascaris, who was to become his life partner" (Webby, Elizabeth 235). After World War II, White returned to Australia and settled in the semi-rural outskirts of Sydney. During his eighteen year stay here he began making a reputation for himself as a writer. He then published his novel The Aunt's Story written in 1948, which was his first important work. The Aunt's Story was a comic description of a spinster's travels, caught between the cultures of Britain and Australia. In 1955 The Tree of Man was published in America and later in England. It was a family saga of two characters Stan and Amy, in search of values in life set up a farm in the wilderness of Australia and start a family, but the land is engulfed by the suburbs in the end. His works were mostly on the Australian culture and past. The Tree of a Man was a rage in the United States but failed in Australia. White's first big rave in Australia came when his novel Voss won the Miles Franklin Literary Award. His novel Voss, characterized Voss who dealt with misfits and eccentrics. In his book Riders in the Chariot published in 1961, White characterized many outcasts, a spinster, a washer woman and a Jewish refugee scholar. This book was a best seller and it also won him the second Miles Franklin Literary Award. His collection of short stories The Burnt Ones and the play The Season at Sarsaparilla, depict the fictional town of Sarsaparilla and established him as a major writer who was compared to Thomas Hardy, D H Lawrence and Leo Tolstoy. He remained a private person and avoided interviews and public appearances. He wrote The Vivisector in 1968 and it was about an artist, people linked to his friend, a painter Sidney Nolan, but White refused it. Later he decided not to accept any more awards for his work and went on to refuse the $10,000 Britannia Award and Miles Franklin Award. White was a supporter of Gough Whitlam's Labour government. White became vocal about issues related to Aboriginal rights and protection of environment. In 1973, White received the Nobel Prize for Literature. The reception of the award had a direct impact on his career as his publisher doubled the printing of The Eye of the Storm and gave him an advance for his next novel. White used the money to establish the Patrick White Award given to creative writers annually. White was also made the Australian of the Year. However, he wasn't very enthusiastic about it. In the 1970s White health became to weaken. In 1979, his novel The Twyborn Affair was short listed for a Booker Prize, but he requested that his name be removed, so younger talent can get a chance to win. After his novel The Twyborn Affair written in 1979 he indicated that it would be his last novel and that he would write only for radio and the stage. But he published his autobiography, Flaws In The Glass in 1981 which spoke of homosexuality in Australian society, a topic which he never dealt of, it also spoke of his refusal to accept the Nobel Prize personally. Later White also edited a book written by Alex Xenophon Demirjan Gray, Memoirs Of Many In One. Through his work he influenced the Australian culture and drama. White also wrote Three Uneasy Pieces, with his thoughts on ageing and society's efforts to achieve artistic perfection. David Marr wrote White's biography which he completed in 1990, White spent nine days going over the details of his biography with Marr. White died on September 30, 1990, after along illness, and his death was made public only after the funeral. Throughout his career as a writer and novelist White had been very private, and the delay in publicizing the news of his death was on his own request. White had influenced Australian theatre and art tremendously as he wrote about the Australian society and issues that were seldom spoken of, like homosexuality. A selection of White's letters was published in 1996, this book was edited by White's biographer David Marr. These letter record the White's interest in Jewish culture, his calm wartime period in West Africa, his anti-royalism, and his belief in the legality of homosexual unions. The success of both these figures is a tribute to the skill, insight and style and hard work. The fact that their contributions influenced the Australian society proves that their work in the field of theatre and art is commendable. The impact of Barry Humphries and Patrick White on Australian theatre and art is so strong that it can even be noticed today. Work Cited. Wikipedia, 2007, Patrick White, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_White St. Pierre, Paul Matthew: A Portrait of the Artist as an Australian, MQUP, Brisbane, 2004. White, Patrick: Three Uneasy pieces, Cape, Michigan, 1988. Webby, Elizabeth, The Cambridge Companion to Australian Literature, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2000. Read More