Today we go to indie, funded and opera stages with three SM regulars.
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Fleur Kilpatrick
Playwright, librettist, director, pot plant parent and person who chats about theatre on the radio
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| Fleur Kilpatrick. Photo by Sarah Walker |
Favourite moments in 2019.
Robot Song’s (Theatre Works) warm tenderness and compassion was theatre at its best. It met its audience where they were, be they children or adults. I think back in particular to the parent characters, who spent most of the play as back up musicians to their child, watching her struggle with the cruelties of the world and unable to make it all right. The gentle ways in which they tried to make magic for and around her as she stood in the centre of the stage will stay with me. I learnt a lot about love watching it.
The beautiful, dreamlike way in which
Love/Chamberlain’s (also Theatre Works) script and set spoke to each other still gives me a little shudder. The audience were so still, tipping forward in their seats, leaning into this gentle grief world where two blamed and shamed women – Courtney Love and Lindy Chamberlain – met and shared a moment in a dream desert.
Emma Hall’s
World Problems use of past tense, dragging us through time and the gorgeous image of her labouring away to create a trampoline. The sight of her bouncing gently up and down brought back so many memories of childhood hours spent in airborne storytelling. To go straight from this play into a practical response – the night I saw it, a workshop on energy saving in your home – was such a beautiful way to make her imagined world part of our real one.
Looking forward to in 2020.
I don't know. But I hope everyone is nice to each other and we all get some rest.
SM: I recently asked someone "What was the name of Fleur's play about whales that had a whale in it?". "You mean
Whale." Yes I did. I loved it. I might not remember names and titles but I remember how I felt during
Whale and how I felt after and that Fleur and her team of amazing creators trusted that an audience of strangers would step up every night to make this piece of theatre.
Katie Purvis
Theatregoer, comedy and cabaret lover, sometime critic, radio presenter
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| Katie Purvis. Photo by Betty Sujecki |
Favourite moments in 2019.
In theatres:
Barbara and the Camp Dogs at
Malthouse broke my heart into tiny pieces; I was thrilled by
MTC's
A View From A Bridge;
Come From Away at the Comedy Theatre made me leap to my feet to applaud and cheer; and I laughed till my face hurt at
Nakkiah Lui's
Black is the New White at
MTC.
At the
Melbourne International Comedy Festival:
Larry Dean's
Bampot was face-achingly funny and unexpectedly poignant; Jude Perl's
I Have a Face was seriously great; and I literally laughed till I cried at
Lano and Woodley's brilliantly silly
Fly.
Musical highlights: It was a privilege to be at Hamer Hall for
Deborah Cheetham's
Eumeralla : A Requiem for Peace, sung entirely in dialects of the Gunditjmara people and featuring a huge cast of performers (including the
Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and Chorus and the
Dhungala Children’s Choir); the prolonged standing ovation was hugely deserved. And it was a joy to see piano man
Trevor Jones doing his thing at the 2019 Melbourne Cabaret Festival Closing Party – simply superb, and the best night I had in a performance space all year.
Looking forward to in 2020.
Haus of Hans:Disco Spektaculär at
MICF;
Grey Arias at
Malthouse, featuring
Le Gateau Chocolat and
Adrienne Truscott;
Conchita Wurst and
Trevor Ashley in concert at Hamer Hall; and
Fun Home at
MTC.
SM: Katie is my go-to editor and reader. She understands why I despair because program notes almost never seem to be proofed and are usually filled with grammar mistakes that change the meaning of what the writer is trying to say. Katie also hosts
Miss Chatelaine on Joy 94.9 on Sunday mornings; she knows me well enough to know that I am never awake to listen live, but I do listen to some of the on-demand recordings. Yay for on demand.
Paul Selar
Opera critic, the Opera Chaser
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| Paul Selar. Selfie |
Favourite moments in 2019.
Melbourne has generally supported a rather good balance of opera on a variety of scales. The year produced many highlights; however, from the all-important small independent players, it didn’t feel like it was buzzing with the same kind of optimism of recent years. Apart from a sympathetic re-staging of Australian composer
Barry Conyngham's 1984
Fly,
Lyric Opera of Melbourne have been unaccustomedly quiet and
BK Opera seem to epitomise what living hand to mouth from one show to the next is like.
It’s all to do with money. Isn’t it always?
Gertrude Opera’s much appreciated hard work behind the scenes is paying off with simple, effective and increasingly impressive production quality. Every opera-loving soul should’ve clogged the roads to get to the company’s Y
arra Valley Opera Festival, now in its second year. Two of the year’s best small independent works could have been seen on one day!
Jonathan Dove’s,
The Enchanted Pig, in its Australian premiere, was a gorgeously slick, infectiously entertaining and superbly sung work.
Monteverdi’s almost 370 year-old early baroque opera,
Poppea, looked, felt and sounded as fresh as any new theatre. Both were directed with an acute eye for drawing meaningful characters by
Gale Edwards.
On a far larger scale, a
Rossini rarity got masterpiece treatment, literally, in
Opera Australia’s
Il Viaggio a Reims from director
Damiano Michieletto, whose ingeniously devised production and inventive angle came with a long list of radiant performances. The company also stood out on top in a concert performance of
Giordano’s
Andrea Chénier, a work often criticised for its thin plot but more than compensated for by splendid musicality. It helped that international star tenor
Jonas Kaufmann, who deserves every glowing superlative showered upon him, was there giving layers of magnificently coloured and carved vocals.
Melbourne’s continuing love affair with
Wagner resulted in two memorable outings. In
Victorian Opera’s Parsifal, director
Roger Hodgman brought clarity to every character and subtlety to its strong symbolic and religious overtones and
Melbourne Opera, without a penny of taxpayer funding, got the year off to a brilliant start with
The Flying Dutchman.
Darren Jeffery’s performance as the Dutchman had thunderous heft and stature and the large chorus of sailors and weavers won’t be forgotten. It’ll be hard to forget the company’s production of
Bellini’s
Norma as well. I saw it three times. Anyone who knows how precious an experience it is to hear soprano
Helena Dix sing her proud and glorious high notes would count themselves lucky. And she’s a devilishly good gestural magnet.
Looking forward to in 2020
More Wagner! I feel enormously lucky to live in a city that is up to the challenge of staging Wagner’s sprawling works. We’ll be getting
Opera Australia’s
Lohengrin, a co-production with
Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie, with English heldon teno
r David Butt Philip making his company debut in the title role. And
Melbourne Opera, who have been instrumental in presenting Wagner’s works, have a new production of
Das Rheingold up their sleeves. My prediction (it’s already a year old) is that this will be the start of another Ring Cycle for Melbourne. There’s also
Victorian Opera’s
Salome, Gertrude Opera’s
Yarra Valley Festival and news from
Lyric that they haven’t fallen by the wayside.
You can also join me for my 5th Annual OperaChaser Awards on Twitter party to celebrate and honour the exceptional work of opera companies and individuals. It starts at 5 pm on 28 December.
SM: Paul has a job that lets him fly all over the world and see the kind of opera that leaves many of us seething with jealousy. There are so few opera critics in Australia. Without people who know an art form inside out, it's so hard to share why we love it to new audiences and to people who think of opera as stuffy and boring. Some of it IS stuffy and boring, but so much of is isn't. You can read Paul's reviews at
operachaser.blogspot.com.
