Capital

Capital is the working title of an opera for which Fiona Fraser of ANU Music School is writing the music, and I am contributing the libretto. Walter Burley and Marion Mahoney Griffin received news of the competition for Canberra’s plan on their honeymoon in June 1911, 100 years ago. In the five scenes that follow the one below, a comedy of troubled love and exaggerated town-planning, is played out, where historical persons are transposed and serenity is rescued for the human spirit. 

Scene One:   

(Walter works at a drawing table, dressed loosely for honeymoon, Marion enters, dressed ditto.

Marion:

Say, Walter Burley! Honey Walt!

Put pencil down! I’ve called a halt!

Walter:

What is it now, my sweet Apache?

What’s fired you and made you itchy?

Marion: (flourishes advert in newspaper)

Walt, are we New World, or stale?

Look, here’s an advert likes our scale.

Australia’s got this competition;

They need two Yanks with sense of mission

to plan them their new capital

with fees galore to map it all.

If they’re New World then it’s our dooty

To supplement their sense of beauty.

Walter: (dubious, continues with protractor and pencil)

Australia’s far, and upside down,

In summer turns tarnation brown,

And hell, I’ve heard those folk are loth

To choose between the bush or town.

Marion:

Then honey Walt, we’ll give them both!

Walter: (smiling suddenly, hugs her. For the next few exchanges they might perform an erotic tease with each other, the body movements being counterpart to the architectural abstracts.)

Why Honey, I’d have thought of that

Had you not pulled it from your hat.

Marion:

Prairie School is gonna spin this,

Marion and Walt will win this….

Walter: (catching her enthusiasm)

… create a town from circle, axis …

Marion:

… where wallpaper is made from taxes …

Walter:

… plant triangles and hexagons …

Marion:

… where clerks canoodle with black swans …

Walter:

… Yow! suburbs, parklands, cheek-by-jowl …

Marion:

… where doctors counsel lovesick owls,

and suburbs cling like honeycomb

to hills that bees patrol as home …

Walter:

…where spiders make their webs to be

this city-plan’s facsimile …

Marion:

Then Walter, honey, for those spiders,

Get your pencil and dividers …

Walter and Marion together:

… to draw up plans that let a nation

live with and not against Creation,

where laws can take a human face

from uncontaminated space.

Marion:

Walt, destiny’s inopportune,

They need them entries mighty soon …

Walter:

There goes a fellow’s honeymoon …

Marion:

A talent lives when it gets going.

Now we’re that talent and it’s flowing.

Walter:

Well, lead, my Irish banshee, lead,

with Walt your willing millipede,

and sure, my “Star of County Down”

we will triangulate this town.

Marion:

Triangulate? Triangulate?

That verb’s too close to “strangulate”!

Walter:

Then how, Madáme Geronimo,

How pitch our braggadocio?

Marion:

Just dream and draw, you cuddlesome galoot,

and don’t expect a Mahoney to salute.

Walter:

I’ll do that. You take squirrel brush and paint.

Excuses here, Apache, there just ain’t.

 

Marion and Walter together:

We drew, we painted, and we won.

then watched how dreamin’ come undone,

but took our joys and heartbreak all-in-one.