LOVED, admired and occasionally sniffed at, Canberra Repertory Society has been one of the focal points of Canberra culture since the 1930s and it’s no secret that it’s just turned 90.
So tight is its grip on the national capital that it has seen diplomats such as John McCarthy, Colin Willis and Britain’s Sir William Charters Patey treading the boards and has numbered even a governor-general, Sir Paul Hasluck, in its membership.
Rain, hail and shine since September 1932, Rep has staged “Reppy” English comedies, thrillers and serious plays, even throughout covid.
Many are the theories about Rep’s longevity, so to canvas them I caught up with Evol McLeod, who was manager at Rep 1986-1993, and Stephen Pike, business manager 1999-2004, to get the long view.
Both managers were famous in their time for having achieved that elusive theatrical El Dorado, bums on seats, with each achieving upwards of 80 per cent capacity regularly and 98 per cent for separate productions of Goulburn director John Spicer’s stage version of “Pride and Prejudice”. Old Time Music Hall also attracted punters in droves.
To McLeod, the high point of her time at Rep was the late, enigmatic Ralph Wilson’s Classical Theatre Ensemble which, she says, brought in an intellectual frisson and new, educated audiences keen to see the greatest classics of western theatre.
Pike, who joined Rep after it had been in the doldrums, won a case of beer from set designer Russell Brown, who bet he couldn’t raise the numbers to 60 per cent.
McLeod believes Rep occupies a unique place in Australia for its high-quality amateur theatre, while Pike, agreeing, says its survival rests on the consistency of its production standards and, even more, on its social cohesion, with people joining the society and becoming friends for life.
This was possibly the key to success during difficult times when companies often found it hard to attract audiences of even 20 or 30.
Pike’s story of an unnamed professional who derided Rep as a mere “social club” illustrates one of the ongoing questions about Rep – is it professional or amateur?
In reality, Rep has always been proudly amateur, a society of theatre lovers who once voted down a proposal to go professional.
But its relationship to professional theatre is symbiotic and even today, talented figures behind Canberra’s independent theatre companies such as Jarrad West, Jordan Best and Lexi Sexuless have all cut their teeth in Rep.
As well, as McLeod says, the society has long acted as a seeding ground, almost a school for professionals, as generations of Rep alumni have gone on to professional careers interstate.
Earlier directors such as George Ogilvie got their start at Rep, actor-director Ed Whiteman went to the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art armed with Rep’s Theatre Players Scholarship and comedian Dave Callan started out playing straight roles with Rep before launching a career based on his day job with ASIO.
But questions always lingered.
The late Walter Learning came to Canberra in the ’60s to do a PhD, was seduced into Rep and later went on to become director of the Canada Council, but came back to Rep regularly, often to stage the annual Christmas farce.
Learning once told me of his near-disbelief that Canberra, a decent-sized city, still didn’t have a professional theatre company, privately blaming Rep, with its ready supply of talented senior public servants who could easily get time off to rehearse. How could a professional theatre company possibly compete?
This has led to a love-hate relationship between Rep and local professionals, exacerbated by the fact that, as Pike and McLeod attest, standards at Rep have been high, leading to confusion about what “professional” means.
Rep’s rapport with the general public is built on years of engagement with Canberrans from well before the Canberra Theatre was built, when Rep was the only source of mainstage theatre.
I caught up by phone with actor Peter Rowley, who joined Rep in 1957 after school, leaving Cowra for a job in the then Department of Works. It was his making.
Rowley won a place at NIDA in 1962 and went on to become one of the country’s best-known classical comedy actors, but says he found it remarkable at the time that Rep, though amateur, engaged professional director-managers like Alan Harvey, then later Peter Batey, Ross McGregor and many others.
Rep, Pike and McLeod continued to contract professional directors with respectable fees, although some, such as Rep member-director Corille Fraser, declined to be paid.
One such director, Aarne Neeme, tells me from Singapore that he has done more than a dozen productions with Rep over 40 years.
“It has always felt like being a part of a cosy family business, with talented actors, crew, support staff and a warmly receptive audience,” Neeme says.
Back in 1932, Rep went independent because of a spat about a costuming item, giving the title to Anne Edgeworth’s history of Canberra Rep from 1932 to 1982 titled, “The Cost of Jazz Garters”.
Now in 2022, the company is in good shape, rejoices in a membership of 125 hands-on volunteers, and has a production of “Sense and Sensibility” coming up – the very kind of English play on which much of its history has been built.
Who can doubt that it will continue to flourish for another 90 years?
Canberra Rep’s 90th birthday dinner is at the Canberra CIT, Reid, 6pm, October 20.
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