Ben Apfelbaum

SHATNER’S WORLD : TO INFINITY AND BEYOND

The late comedienne Joan Rivers remarked in her documentary  A Piece Of Work that what was death to her was her diary with no forthcoming bookings.

William Shatner’s diary I imagine would continuously be full and in Shatner’s world he goes back in time (perhaps with a diary’s assistance) to present to the audience autobiographical snippets of his extraordinary and colourful life and career.

SHATNER’S WORLD was first performed on Broadway in 2007 and he brought it to Sydney three years ago. ‘The full diary’ since then has meant that he has had plenty of new material to draw on. By my calculation he must have started his Australian tour shortly after wrapping up another season of what it appears to be the very gruelling Better Late Than Never television reality series. Also gruelling is his Australian tour with consecutive performances in Perth, Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne and then on to New Zealand.

Oh, did I mention the man is 87 years old?!

What is also remarkable is the energy and enthusiasm he brings to the show with just a screen and a chair (which he sometimes uses as a prop), he prowls around the stage like a man twenty years his junior, modulating his voice to envelope you in to his fascinating life and career.Shatner began performing in the Stratford Shakespeare Festival beginning in 1954 as an understudy for Christopher Plummer in Julius Caesar in those early acting days he relates amusing stories of him forgetting his lines, other actors forgetting their lines, and on the last night of Shatner’s Broadway debut in Christopher Marlowe’s Tamburlaine The Great playing a prank on a furious Anthony Quayle who played the lead role.

Shatner is an extraordinary raconteur facilitated by his charisma, charm and self deprecation. He revels in his cult icon status as Star Trek’s Captain James T Kirk. Although it only ran for three years its enduring popularity led to Shatner being invited by NASA to visit and climb into the lunar module. Whilst inside he saw vision of what the astronauts would see as they approach the moon to his utter surprise and delight what they would also see was the Starship Enterprise passing by. He emerged to a hangar full of  NASA employees laughing yet applauding him.

In a nuanced two hour performance Shatner tells of his shock and sadness of the time when he returned home after touring to find his third wife dead, demonstrating that there also have been difficult times in his life.

On the screen behind him there are clips of career highlights from Alexander The Great to television roasts, to Boston Legal, personal family photos and amongst other things photos of him harness racing. He is passionate about horse breeding and competing in quarterback riding in rodeos. When a horse rolled on his leg and broke it he used this experience to find a way to perform Kirk’s death in one of the Star Trek movies.

Shatner’s extensive charity work is demonstrated in one instance that whilst on the set of Boston Legal he passed a kidney stone and was asked and agreed to sell it for $25,000 to a charity providing houses for the poor. Inspired by this, celebrities and fans raised a further $75,000 which made it possible  to buy a habitat house for one such poor family.

There are many laughs to be had from his tales of his Jewish mother (don’t give me whiskey, it will take the edge of my suffering), of his late father who was very parsimonious (Dad would be so proud of you, you got a great deal on the coffin!) and to the early vaudeville shows (my ears are ringing. Then hang up).  Even Jewish wives are not spared (why do Jewish women like Won Ton soup? Because they can say it in reverse later in the evening). And in all the while Shatner is telling his stories at full tilt, gesticulating wildly, striding up and down the stage and even sitting upside down in his chair.

The show concludes with a song in his resurrected musical career which he attributes to the young musician and composer Ben Folds. His most recent album is entitled William Shatner- Has Been, because someone tried to insult him in this way.

I can’t stress enough the amazing vitality and brio of this remarkable octogenarian who is more youthful than people decades younger than him.

William Shatner – live long and prosper!

 

Published by Ben Apfelbaum

My photography began when my father handed me the proverbial brownie box camera as a child. As cameras developed I went through Fujica and Olympus range finders graduating to my first single lens reflex camera, the Minolta SRT101, the latter being the greatest facilitator to my growth as a photographer. Digital photography has only added to this. I was a regular contributor to Camera Craft magazine (Australian Camera ) for over three years. During Australia’s Bicentennial year (1988) I made it a personal project to document the celebrations. This culminated in the creation of a book of my photos which was published in 1989. The book was called CELEBRATING AUSTRALIA and came with an accompanying calendar. My works have appeared in a number of publications including the coffee book entitled MY AUSTRALIA (1989), publisher Robertsbridge Severn. This book had a preface by the then Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke. I was a co-photographer on a book entitled SYDNEY- DISCOVER THE CITY with text written by Robert Treborlang. Major Mitchell Press was the publisher. Also for two years I was the photographer for calendars celebrating Sydney’s multicultural communities. The two calendars were entitled MULTICULTURAL SYDNEY. My work appeared in a group exhibition held at Sydney’s Town Hall pertaining to the diversity of life in South America to raise money for orphanages there. I have over one hundred photos stored in the New South Wales State Library archive. I had a solo exhibition held in 2007 entitled Ben’s Lens at the Sydney Jewish Museum which celebrated the vibrancy of the Sydney Jewish community. Some of these photos are on the Museum’s permanent display. I have exhibited internationally firstly at the Spruill Gallery in Atlanta Georgia, United States, and in an exhibition entitled Kosher and Co at the Jewish Museum in Berlin. Currently I am a regular contributor to J-Wire and this esteemed publication. To celebrate the opening of a permanent Photography Gallery, the State Library of New South Wales selected 400 shots from its archive of over 2,000,000 images to display in the new gallery. An image of mine was plucked out of the multi million photo archive to be part of the inaugural exhibition.