Reluctant Actor’s New Role
By Philip O’Brien

I wouldn’t have picked George Huitker as the retiring type. It’s the one role that jars alongside his repertoire of actor, director, playwright, poet, composer and teacher. But he’s loathe to talk about his award, as Best Actor in last year’s CAT Awards, for his performance in Free Rain’s Production of the Louis Nowra play Cosi. He seems embarrassed about it now, almost as if he still feels that the award belonged more appropriately to the whole cast.

And, for all his abilities as an actor, his heart is really with directing. “I don’t feel that I’m getting any more confident on stage as I get older,” he says. “People tell me that I seem so comfortable there. But the more experienced you get the harder you are on yourself and the more you feel responsibility for the whole cast.”

Reluctant or not, Huitker returns to the stage to take the role of Sergeant Dan Simmonds in Free Rain’s revival of David Williamson’s The Removalists. It may be a classic but, with at least one new Williamson play being written each year, why this choice of a 1970s play about police brutality?

Huitker and I talk several days after the events in Littleton, Colorado. The tragedy there suggests that issues of suffused anger and violence are as pertinent today as ever.

“The Removalists is about not just about domination and the abuse of power but also mental and physical violence,” he says. “And, in the politically correct ‘90s, its depiction of relationships between the sexes is still potent. Even though aspects of the play, like the language, are very ‘70s, it still resonates to a ‘90s crowd.”

Huitker is a teacher of Drama and English at Radford College. He has a strong involvement with youth theatre and many of the performers in his productions are ex-students. He doesn’t fit the stereotype of a teacher, seeming almost one of the kids himself. “I guess I’m lucky to be working with young people during the day,” he says. “I’d like to thnk that it keeps me from getting stuffy.”

He takes issue with a description I once made of him as being a combination of Robin Williams’ character in the film Dead Poets Society and Curly from the Three Stooges. Though tired of always being thought of as a comic, he is conscious of the role of humour in teaching. But he is particularly concerned with the responsibility that teachers have to influence impressionable minds.

“The Robin Williams character lacked responsibility,” he says. “He should have had a better knowledge of his students before putting then in a situation where conflict would inevitably have disastrous results. Those teachers that I consider most effective steer a fine line between having straightforward rules and being able to be flexible.”

Writing for the theatre is a logical extension of his teaching. His plays, such as Brothers Grim, Blind Wound Sting and Cyberbia, focus on issues of relevance to young people. But he worries that his work is fixed in a particular time and place and doesn’t have broad appeal. For the moment he is writing poetry instead. His collection, An Unfamiliar Sea, was published by Ginninderra Press last year.

From the perspective of a thirty-two-year old, Huitker wonders whether he still understands the concerns that engage his students. “I often think it’s hard to be a happy person in the ‘90s. There does seem to be a lot of negativity around. It’s very easy to be suckered in by the images and values of popular culture.”

So is theatre a means of countering this? “A good piece of theatre that is presented in a provocative and thoughtful way has the capacity to move an audience. I would hope that young people would come and see this early Williamson, regardless of their feelings about him. It’s a potent and proven piece and just long enough to sustain intensity and pace.”

This production of The Removalists features several regular performers with Free Rain Theatre. Huitker says that there is a strong ensemble spirit developing in the company and an ability to be honest with each other about performance. This trust is all the more important, he says, when the issues being addressed are so emotional. “But we have to be careful about being a young company. Rehearsals are very intense and sometimes in a fight scene you have to be careful not to knock each other out.” He rubs his jaw thoughtfully.

Huitker’s character of the ocker Sergeant Simmonds has been updated for the times: he is less overtly aggressive, more street-smart. “But even in the 1970s version this is a man who knows how to play the system and manipulate it to his cause,” he says. “That’s a timeless skill and it’s what makes The Removalists so relevant today.”

The Removalists plays at the Currong Contemporay Arts Theatre at 8pm from April 29 to May 1 and from May 5 to 8 then at the Belconnen Community Theatre from 13 to 15 May. Bookings on 6247 4000 (Currong) and 6253 1166 (Belconnen).

---

The Removalist was the first work in the 1999 New EreKtions’ season. Free Rain had to turn people away the show proved so popular. The Currong’s 1999 Company-In-Residence is obviously attracting deserved attention. Free Rain’s production of Williamson’s The Removalist, under the direction of Anne Somes, was a gem. For me the play centred around George Huitker, for reasons that go beyond the mere fact he held the lead role. Playing the manipulative, authoritarian Police Sergeant Simmonds, Huitker’s depth of theatrical experience showed through with a performance that was as special as it was impeccable.

How an actor recovers from fluffing a line makes a huge difference to the audience. It can break the illusion of witnessing a real life situation on stage. The performance I saw did have a few ‘fluffs’. This was an area that Huitker smoothed over to perfection. His faultless improvisation meant that, firstly, he remained totally immersed in his character for the entire duration of the play and, secondly, that there was a sense of his character actually communicating with the others in a natural way through a series of highly tense enactments.

Then there were the little extras in Huitker’s performance which subtly added to the complexity of his character. Facial expressions, bodily twitches and head jerks provided an unexpected subtext when they served to communicate that which the character may have been thinking in reaction to the dialogue. Huitker could have been doing this expressly or unconsciously yet it presented a real sense of past in the character through which we began to formulate a non-verbalised picture of his motivations.

As you would expect, the play required furniture to be removed. The use of roll-up ‘furniture’ pieces that detached from free-standing partitions was a clever set device designed by Angela Hancock and Nick Akhurst.

Daniel Maloney gave a confident performance as the Removalist. You could almost feel the anger seething from Stuart Roberts as the criminal/victim Kenny and his ailing at being repeatedly bashed was uncomfortably real. The casting of Arran McKenna as the inexperienced Constable Ross was an appropriate choice because he looked the part without even having to open his mouth.

The abilities displayed by George Huitker come to an actor with time and the opportunity the Free-Rainers have to share theatrical knowledge and closely study technique during their residency at the Currong will see the company go from strength to strength in the future.

Naomi Black, MUSE

*

It’s back to David Williamson’s 1971 violent classic for Free Rain and the opening of this year’s New EreKtions season. And what a nasty picture it cheerfully paints of life and the law in a two-man Melbourne police station on Constable Ross’s first day.

George Huitker mooches menacingly around the stage as Simmonds, the sergeant who gives wet-behind-the-ears Ross (Arran McKenna) the low-down on life and policing. Sisters Fiona (Kelly Somes) and Kate (Georgina Dudzinski) turn up to report domestic violence. The police response is not exactly sensitive but at least they arrange to turn up with a removalist to help Fiona leave her husband, Kenny.

At which stage we move into the second act nightmare, where the dreadful Kenny (Stuart Roberts) is progressively beaten up by Simmonds, the women flee, the removalist (Daniel Maloney) takes away the furniture and Constable Ross discovers he is no better than the other blokes. It’s blackly funny stuff that still works after almost 30 years.

I had some problem with the admittedly deft solution to the furniture problem. The removalist tearing off and rolling up pictures of furniture doesn’t have quite the same impact as actually lumping around the real things. But it is good to see Free Rain maintaining its commitment to Australian classics and that a new audience is being introduced to them. Post-show comments showed the impact of the final moments was felt. See for yourself how it end.

Alanna Maclean, The Canberra Times