Catharsis and joy collide in this emotionally explosive show

MUSIC
Origins ★★★½
Heidelberg Choral Society and Orchestra, Melbourne Recital Centre, July 18

Hats off to the Heidelberg Choral Society for commissioning a full-length oratorio from an Australian composer, performing it well and gathering a capacity audience to hear it. These days that is no mean feat. Nicholas Buc’s Origins, with a nod to Haydn’s famous oratorio The Creation, attempts to tell the story of creation from a scientific rather than biblical point of view.

Cast in four parts, with a total of 21 movements, the 100-minute work traverses a huge amount of material from the origins of the universe, of life and of species to the origins of humanity itself. Accompanied by video content produced by Drew Berry and using a libretto devised by geneticist Jennifer A. Marshall Graves and poet Leigh Hay (both Heidelberg choristers), Buc has devised a colourful, appealing score that challenges but doesn’t overtax the amateur singers.

This patchwork quilt of a piece aims to be many things at once: part science and history lesson, part admonition and part humorous diversion. The humorous elements worked best in this clear and confident account under conductor Peter Bandy.

Contralto soloist Liane Keegan’s evocation of the ant queen, the choral commentary on the lyrebird’s dance and the four soloists’ musings on reproductive methods all had a welcome lightness of touch, soprano Lee Abrahmsen, tenor Robert Macfarlane and bass-baritone Adrian Tamburini adding to the witty vocal repartee.

Buc’s skilful orchestration effectively underscored elements of drama and pathos in other sections of the work, but occasionally portions of the lengthy libretto laboured to make their pedagogical and moral points. Also, the archaic use of “man” and “mankind” tended to negate the otherwise inclusive message of the text. Even so, this adventurous creative journey through quantum physics, DNA, Darwinian theory and the fate of humanity is something of which its creators can be proud.
Reviewed by Tony Way

THEATRE
Animal Farm ★★★★½
Northcote Town Hall, until July 23

This wild adaptation of Animal Farm takes George Orwell’s scathing fable about the horrors of Stalinist Russia and smashes it into a madcap satire of Australian politics and the dark carnival of late capitalism.

Bloomshed has form on adapting literary classics – last year it punked up Milton’s Paradise Lost – and the company has perfected a style of avant-garde ensemble theatre in which creative irreverence is wedded to a reverence for the spirit of the original.

Chaos erupts onstage in this tale of barnyard revolution – so much so you feel sorry for the stage manager, who must vacuum a mess of confetti and glitter (not to mention moist wads of half-masticated apple) from the stage after every show.

It’s a “sorry, not sorry” situation, though: the onstage madness and flippant hilarity that fuel this Animal Farm serve to sharpen a parable that warns against complacency.

Absurdity and injustice, inhumanity and misrule aren’t limited to Soviet Communism, after all. They’re ideologically promiscuous. Our democracy has more than its share of pigs in the trough. For their part, the pigs who lead the rebellion here are victims of human tyranny, even if the power they come to wield in the name of “Animalism” transforms them into something indistinguishable from their oppressors.

Neatly bookended by narrative poetry, the show’s political satire is delivered as super-slick, fast-paced devised theatre. It gallops from idealism to brutal dictatorship, goaded by hare-brained physical comedy and riotously funny animal impersonation, some of it daffy, some (such as Syd Brisbane’s naïve and dutiful incarnation of Boxer the workhorse) remarkably poignant.

I don’t want to give too much away, though one highlight is the rhetorical showdown between the two pigs Snowball (Laura Aldous) and Napoleon (Elizabeth Brennan) over the farm’s leadership. The argument is convincingly won by the sensible Snowball before, in a scene of surreal menace, the resentful dictator comes to power, trashing the rulebook and singing an unearthly karaoke version of a Fleetwood Mac favourite.

Bizarre? It isn’t weirder than Trump becoming president, though the show strikes closer to home when the animals face a Senate inquiry into agricultural mismanagement and corruption. It’s a grimly farcical masterstroke: what could bring pigs and humans closer than a rabid lampoon of our own unedifying political culture?

The company has created just over an hour of brilliantly choreographed comedic mayhem, anchored by stylish design and an intelligent distillation of Orwell’s themes. This is Melbourne’s indie theatre scene at its inventive best. Grab a ticket before they sell out.
Reviewed by Cameron Woodhead

THEATRE
This is Living ★★★★
Malthouse Theatre, until July 30

It’s been a hell of a year, and a weekend retreat in Hepburn Springs is what Hugh (Marcus McKenzie) decides he and his friends need. But between Hugh’s ginger movements around the house, his insistence on making tea with filtered water, and his constant admonishing of his partner Will (Wil King), it quickly becomes clear this is no regular weekend away.

It’s slowly revealed to audiences that Hugh has cancer – he’s in pain, quick to anger, fearful of everything from mosquitoes to being touched. Will is placating and deferential, taking on the role of Hugh’s protector but unwilling to face the truth of his diagnosis. Their three older female friends join them – glamorous self-involved travel show host Alex (Belinda McClory), dedicated drama teacher Jo (Maria Theodorakis), and the gloriously acerbic Sharleen (Michelle Perera), a divorcee and former playwright – and that’s when the wheels truly fall off.

Taking place in that liminal space between Christmas and New Year, Ash Flanders’ dramedy This Is Living is reminiscent of works like Charlotte Wood’s novel The Weekend where the claustrophobic, somewhat inescapable setting of a weekend away becomes a stage for betrayals, revelations and showdowns. Secrets bubble up to the surface, barely concealed resentments come to the fore, and relationships teetering on the edge plunge into the abyss.

Akin to the grand set of a ’90s sitcom, the meticulously demarcated domestic spaces are competing stages to the unfurling action, with a hallway providing the dramatic backdrop to characters’ swift entrances and exits. Mirroring her set design, Matilda Woodroofe’s costuming is impeccable. As the characters switch between outfits distinct to their eccentricities and foibles, they shift between different modes of being.

Their easy, familiar camaraderie is a testament to the also impeccable acting and writing of these characters. They talk over one another, exchanging barbed words and blistering truths in one instance, loving observations in the next. Formalities are eschewed, with a mere few words artfully conjuring shared personal histories, and the humour is macabre.

The self-anointed “spinsters and queens” in This is Living showcase the richness of multigenerational friendship. Their unspoken grief over Hugh’s diagnosis is juxtaposed against their own regrets of never having self-actualised, of the precarity and occasional futility of pursuing a life in the arts.

This Is Living is far less concerned with portraying “perfect” cancer patients or carers than it is with the flawed ways we react to the spectre of death, to the sometimes-stifling responsibility of caring for those we love, to the ways in which pain and suffering recast us into people we don’t recognise. It’s relatable, darkly funny and, most of all, real.
Reviewed by Sonia Nair

THEATRE
Far Away ★★½
fortyfivedownstairs, until July 30

Far Away might seem far out, and perhaps only Caryl Churchill could dream up a dystopian vision that mixes the paranoia of total war with that notoriously inhumane and barbaric art: millinery. Yet Churchill is such a commanding playwright that the hat fits… so snugly in fact that the play’s bizarre and darkly speculative theatrical world should not feel far away from our own.

It begins with a young girl, Joan (Darcy Sterling-Cox), who has glimpsed horrors in the night and gets comforted and misdirected by her guardian Harper (Alison Whyte). The influence of Pinter hovers over the descent into menace from a seemingly innocuous surface, but the dramatic maternal betrayal – from the sort of age-appropriate white lies parents tell kids into sinister gaslighting – could only have been written by Churchill.

Fast-forward to an adult Joan (Lucy Ansell) on her first day in a prized job. Together with her more experienced colleague Todd (Darcy Kent), she designs and makes elaborate headgear for some kind of parade. There’s a lot going on under their casual workplace banter. Low-temperature flirtation and aesthetic competition disguise dark truths about the conditions of the industry and the social context of the art they make.

These scenes and the parade itself are triumphs of design. The production presents bespoke millinery with quirky and detailed realism, and the hats themselves are wonders to behold.

Their hideous function is revealed through paganistic authoritarian display, which may remind you of Walter Benjamin’s remark that fascism aestheticises politics and communism responds by politicising art. Art itself can never be neutral, Churchill reminds us, and even the most benign forms of it can be co-opted by dehumanising forces.

The final shift sees Todd and Joan escaping the grind for a weekend with Harper, but the getaway is undermined at the most basic level of language. The dialogue flies into a paranoid, almost manic surrealism in which humans are locked in endless war with each other, and with the natural world that sustains them.

Every living thing is forced to take a side in this reality. Even if you’re tickled by the idea of “the cats coming in on the side of the French”, the sheer profusion of absurdity tips the comedy into a dystopian worldview that makes The Hunger Games look positively civilised.

Unfortunately, the performances look a little under-rehearsed. They aren’t as subtle as they should be, nor as attuned to ambiguities and shifts in tone. Still, they’ll probably grow and deepen during the season, and if you haven’t seen this Churchill play, this is a fair introduction to its disturbing power.
Reviewed by Cameron Woodhead

THEATRE
Romeo and Juliet ★★★★
Bell Shakespeare, Arts Centre Melbourne, until July 29

Romeo and Juliet has had quite a year. Audiences flocked to the jukebox musical & Juliet – a playful contemporary makeover in which Juliet sings Britney Spears over Romeo’s corpse and strikes off on her own empowering odyssey.

Now Bell Shakespeare has staged the original romantic tragedy, and it is elegant and lively enough to coax some of that same audience back into the theatre.

What a relief it is when the company rises above its general trend of half-realised productions. There have been noble exceptions, but anyone might be depressed by the regularity with which Bell Shakespeare has succumbed, over the past decade, to uninspired direction, recycled design, or actors who struggle with the demands of performing Shakespeare.

This Romeo and Juliet is performed by an ensemble with the discipline, depth of talent, and the experience and training to be able to act effortlessly in verse.

It makes a world of difference, and allows Peter Evans’ direction, together with Anna Tregloan’s intelligent design, to steer the work into a stark interpretation which seems to know that offence, and the inveterate hatred it breeds, is far more powerful than love.

It opens with the actors gathering in Melbourne black, on a stage marked by two glossy raised platforms separated by a gap. The simple symbolism is strikingly effective and serves a versatile dramatic function: the platforms become dancefloors and bedchambers and tombs; the narrow but implacable divide will be leapt across by lovers, and by combatants in what prove to be (thanks to Nigel Poulton’s fight direction) unusually exciting duels.

As the star-crossed lovers, Jacob Warner and Rose Riley invest themselves fully in the delicate delirium of young love. They take flight into elation, and awe, and flirtatious banter still timeless enough for the Tinder generation to recognise and enjoy.

No less impressive is the transformation – where do they find it? – into a fatal resolve to defy their families and the world for each other.

Romeo is the more difficult role to my mind, because it is less defined, and Warner handles it with understated sensitivity and gentleness. Riley’s Juliet leaves us in no doubt she’s wiser, and braver, than her paramour, even if the spell she weaves can be a little gestural at times.

Lucy Bell mightn’t be an obvious pick for the Nurse, yet brings out the tenderness in her comedic (and later heartbreaking) scenes with Juliet; James Evans’ Capulet hosts the masquerade ball with a winning dollop of dad humour, his easygoing affection sliding into ruthless patriarchy later.

No Shakespearean tragedy is as close to comedy as Romeo and Juliet. Even sober characters like Friar Laurence – played with urbane charm by Robert Menzies – have humorous moments. And on that score, Blazey Best’s portrayal of Mercutio is a misfire.

Apparently, gender blind casting hasn’t rid of us the spectacle of actors karate chopping their crotches in case we missed a bawdy reference.

Best delivers an unattractive lampoon of an Elizabethan dude bro that doesn’t really jibe with Romeo’s observation of his friend, “He jests at scars that never felt a wound.” Mercutio is an innocent. He has never been in love. You want him to at least match Leinad Walker’s Tybalt or Alex King’s Paris for charisma.

There are other minor niggles. Benjamin Cisterne festoons the ceiling with festive lights, for instance, but then leaves some scenes so dimly lit you can’t make out detail in the performances.

Still, they do not cast shade on the strength of the production’s tragic vision. Here, even the senseless death of young lovers can only “seal up the mouth of outrage for a while”, it seems, and Peter Evans curtails the rapprochement between warring families, ending with corpses locked in a final embrace. All are punished, indeed.
Reviewed by Cameron Woodhead

DANCE
Giselle ★★★★
Tokyo Ballet, Arts Centre Melbourne, until July 22

Under the leadership of the late Tadatsugu Sasaki, a charismatic impresario known as the Diaghilev of Japan, The Tokyo Ballet racked up more frequent flyer points than the Rolling Stones.

So, it’s remarkable that this is the company’s first tour of Australia.

On this maiden visit, they’re performing Soviet choreographer Leonid Lavrovsky’s lavishly emotional version of Giselle: a feature of the company’s repertoire for more than half a century.

It’s a production they can do with absolute confidence because it’s so much a part of their artistic character and the spirit they aim to represent.

The first act is set in a snug village beneath spreading oaks, with little paths leading off into the surrounding forest. A sort of storybook Neuschwanstein Castle hovers massively in the distance.

This production emphasises a sense of autumn in all things. The leaves are brown and ready to fall and there is a lilting quality to the dancing that suggests decline and imminent dissolution.

The lovesick Giselle, danced on opening night by the wispy Akira Akiyama, articulates this fall in her rapid progression from hope to madness, despair and then death.

In her collapse at the end of the first act she seems to shatter like a spun glass figurine.

In the second act, at midnight, surrounded by the proverbial murmuring pines, she is resurrected as one of a troupe of vengeful ghost-women who died before their wedding night.

The corps of 26 dancers achieve magnificent unison and ripple effects as they fill the stage with white tulle, enveloping Giselle’s grieving lover and showing off the rigour of the company’s schooling.

Lead dancers Yasuomi Akimoto and Akimi Denda are impeccable, while conductor Benjamin Pope allows the Tokyo Ballet ample time, stretching the tempo into a quivering slowness.

This Giselle is an excellent introduction to a fine company, but next time it would also be good to see a work that shows how far they are extending beyond their Euro-Russian beginnings.
Reviewed by Andrew Fuhrmann

MUSIC
Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique ★★★★
Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Hamer Hall, July 14

Bastille Day was an ideal time for the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra to revisit the Symphonie Fantastique by that most provocative and flamboyant of France’s national treasures, Hector Berlioz.

His vivid musical dream sequence was the culmination of a program devoted to the world of dreams, which began with the children of Gondwana Voices processing through the auditorium, sounding chimes and rubbing the rims of water-filled glasses, while singing a wordless riff on a simple modal melody. In realising Australian composer Michael Atherton’s Shall we dream?, the choristers, together with soprano Alexandra Oomens, created a resonant, evocative soundscape that served as an apt and seamless introduction to excerpts from Mendelssohn’s incidental music to A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Chief conductor Jaime Martin brought plenty of joviality to the Overture, but it was a night in which the woodwind section of the orchestra was to shine brightest, particularly in the bubbling Scherzo and the mock-serious Funeral March. As expected, the brass blazed gloriously in the celebrated Wedding March, while the horns’ burnished contribution to the Nocturne was slightly soured by some wayward violin intonation at the movement’s end. The song You spotted snakes saw Oomens and mezzo-soprano Stephanie Dillon blending happily with the well-enunciated young voices.

Far from Mendelssohn’s genial take on Shakespeare’s fairies, Berlioz’s more adult entertainment fared best in the last two of its five movements. Surrounding an elegantly poised ball scene, the first and third movements were perhaps a little too manicured, lacking the edgy unpredictability of their creator. At the end, the orchestra revelled unashamedly in the black humour of the March to the Scaffold and the irreligiosity of the Dream of the Witches’ Sabbath. Here, the ghoulish and the garish were given free rein, the woodwind once again excelling, bringing this night of dreams to an exhilarating conclusion.
Reviewed by Tony Way

THEATRE
Away ★★★½
Theatre Works, until July 22

Cringe. Cringe is the natural response to the fact that most Australian drama is destined to vanish so soon after it appears.

It is also key to the enduring power of Michael Gow’s Away, a precarious tragicomedy which takes those two great cringe machines – family holidays and amateur theatre – and sets them in search of the sublime.

The latest revival at Theatre Works may not have the budget or the exquisitely tuned ensemble performance of Matt Lutton’s 2017 production at the Malthouse, but it’s still funny and moving.

The cringe factor is off the charts, though.

We begin at a school play. And for a full 20 minutes before the show, a chorus of CollArts students in blue body-paint tackles the Mechanicals’ hapless effort from A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It’s like watching Shakespearean Smurfs on speed, and proves such an enthusiastic (and absolute) shemozzle that Away’s climactic play-within-a-play – staged by a dying boy (Rupert Bevan) and a woman unmoored by grief (Linda Cookson) – can work its magic.

Steven Mitchell Wright directs in an extroverted comic mode that delivers the guts of the play, though some performances can stray too far into caricature, almost into Ozploitation territory.

That’s a valid tactic, but it does trample over subtler notes and coarsens the comedic filigree – at its height, more Chekhovian than Shakespearean – that is capable of emerging.

There are level-headed performances among them, but two of the three families in this production veer into lampoon – some of it acute comedy of recognition, such as Eleanor Howlett’s monstrous mother, consigned to the misery of ceaseless aspiration by a childhood of Depression-era poverty.

Most of the play’s emotional gravity and grace are salvaged by the young leads.

Bevan and Cait Spiker are a luminous antidote to the exaggerated follies and frailties of their parents. The cringe of adolescence lies of course in its earnestness, but it is rarely experienced that way at the time, and there is a vulnerability and consuming vitality to the portrayals here, as well as that ephemeral quality, difficult to capture, of being as becoming, the potential flickering through all that awkwardness.

Greg Carroll’s design and costume hoist the spirit of Australian amateurism proudly – performers keep appearing in Elizabethan ruffs, for no good reason – but there’s a bigheartedness to the artifice.

By the time this production finally swells into that most artificial of forms – opera – Away has enchanted us into accepting the fragility, and the preciousness, of life and art. Warts and all.
Reviewed by Cameron Woodhead

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