Bangarra Dance Theatre is a big winner at the 2018 Helpmann awards, winning six awards for Bennelong, a contemporary dance work by the Indigenous Australian dance company that tells the first contact story of the titular Aboriginal warrior.
The Helpmanns were held over two nights and concluded with the main event at Sydney’s Capitol Theatre on Monday. Broadcast on the ABC, the awards are Australia’s major national prizes for the stage, covering theatre, musical theatre, opera, dance and live music.
Often touted as the country’s equivalent of the Tonys, the ceremony couldn’t help but reflect its limited clout: on Monday night fewer than half of the winners were in Sydney to accept their awards.
As the host and highlight Anne Edmonds put it halfway through: “Didn’t anyone show up?”
Only 4 people turned up so far to accept their awards BUT we have @anneedmonds1 so ... #helpmannawards
— Dee Jefferson (@deejefferson) July 16, 2018
Bennelong won in the major category of best new Australian work, as well as best dance production, choreography, male dancer, scenic design and lighting design. Bangarra also won best regional touring production for Our Land People Stories.
Stephen Page – Bangarra’s creative director, and Bennelong’s choreographer and creator – took the stage, along with the work’s somewhat overwhelmed star, Beau Dean Riley Smith.
“They say First Nations Australians are the oldest people ... all Bangarra ever does is First Nations’ work,” Page said, accepting the award for best new Australian work. “That’s who we are. We’re the carers of our stories, from the past to the present to the future.”
Acknowledging that Bangarra’s productions are often thematically heavy, he said: “I need to do a musical – I need to have a good laugh, I think. Maybe our version of Fame, and it’ll be called Shame. You like it? OK!”
Another original Australian production, Muriel’s Wedding: The Musical won in five categories, for best original score (Kate Miller-Heidke and Keir Nuttall), music direction, costume design, sound design and musical choreography.
But Muriel’s Wedding lost in all its major categories to Beautiful: The Carole King Musical, which premiered in San Francisco in 2013, and beat out Muriel for best female actor (for Esther Hannaford in her highly acclaimed title performance), best musical, best direction of a musical (Mark Bruni) and best female supporting actor (Amy Lehpamer). Beautiful also won best male supporting actor (Mat Verevis).
A common complaint against the Helpmann voting system is that it favours international shows and major works that tour the east coast: productions which are more likely to have been seen by the 1,000-plus industry insiders who vote, and who only need to have seen two shows in categories of four or five.
The nominating panels for each category contain people with vested interests. On Monday night, for instance, the artistic director of the Australian Ballet, David McAllister – who is on the nominating panel for best dance – presented the award for best dance, which his company won.
Best male actor in a musical went to Dream Lover, which had David Campbell in the starring role as Bobby Darin. Hugo Weaving won best male actor in a play for Sydney Theatre company’s The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, and Pamela Rabe won best female actor in a play for The Children: a co-production between Melbourne’s and Sydney’s theatre companies, which also won best play and best direction (Sarah Goodes).
Goodes was the only woman nominated across 12 director categories. The nominees in the scenic, lighting and sound design categories were almost exclusively male, reflecting national statistics of the under representation of women in Australian theatre.
Gender disparity and the #MeToo movement were kept out of most of Monday night’s ceremony, until Celia Pacquola won best comedy performer in a category dominated by women. As she said in her speech, referencing the alleged rape and murder of fellow comedian Eurydice Dixon: “It’s a strange time. There’s a lot of hurt in the comedy community right now. And all I would like to say about this: This one is for all the funny women who just want to tell jokes and get home.”
The other big winner of the night was Neil Armfield’s production of Brett Dean’s Hamlet, which premiered at Glyndebourne festival in the UK last year before headlining Adelaide festival. Hamlet won best opera, best male performer in an opera (Allan Clayton), best female performer in a supporting role (Lorina Gore) and best direction, taking Armfield up to a total of 11 individual Helpmann wins.
The Australian Ballet’s production of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland won best ballet and best female dancer (Ako Kondo). The New York drag performer Taylor Mac won two major prizes – best cabaret performer and best special event – for his 24-hour extravaganza held across four nights at the 2017 Melbourne festival.
The Hobart museum Mona’s summer festival Mona Foma won two Helpmanns, for best music festival and for Gotye’s tribute to Jean-Jacques Perrey and the ondioline; while Paul McCartney’s One on One tour won best international contemporary concert.
• This article was changed on 17 July to reflect that Bangarra won six Helpmann awards for Bennelong, and a seventh for Our Land People Stories. Bangarra were nominated in nine categories.
