Review: Einstein on the beach 2

Einstein on the beach
State Opera of South Australia
7 August 2014
Her Majesty's Theatre
saopera.sa.gov.au
to 21 August 2014

Photo by Bernard Hull

I didn't know if it were possible to see State Opera of South Australia's Einstein on the beach without comparing it to the original Wilson-Glass-Childs production (which toured to Melbourne in 1992 and 2013: both were sublime), but it was such a different experince that comparisons are irrelevant.

Einstein is the second part of the Philip Glass Trilogy being presented by State Opera (with Akhnaten and Satyagraha). They are the first company to present the trilogy as a cycle and one of a tiny handful of companies that Glass has trusted with his operas.

Leigh Warren, as director and choreographer, approached it as a dance work about Einstein's E=mc²  and the theory of relativity. It's not the sensory overload and 4.5 hour non-stop endurance challenge of the original. With breaks, a meal-length interval (with Adelaide's amazing Gouger St restaurants minutes away), there's time to talk and take it all in and see the wonder of this composition through fresh eyes.

The choreography is a visual interpretation of the music with the 1–12 dancers following different parts, rhythms or structures of the score. As much of it wasn't written as dance music – Glass wrote half of it to accompany Robert Wilson's design and direction, with the knee plays written just for scene changes, and the rest for Lucinda Childs's choreography – Warren's approach allows the audience to see the music come to life through the dance. I know the music very well and heard things I've never heard through watching the dance.

At the same time, the dance is all about Einstein's theory. At the most obvious level, the first half is about mass and the second about light. But, just as the dancers depict the music, they demonstrate the movement of mass and light through space far better than any physics lesson – and show it with a sense of fun and emotion that lets us feel the passion behind the equation.

The choreography starts with or re-visits classical arm or leg positions. Like Einsten's physics and Glass's music, the first-learnt classical rules are always there but are questioned and re-constructed to create something that feels so right and balanced and still completely new.

Photo by Darren Williams

And it all melds with the sound created by NAME DELETED, the small on-stage Adelaide Art Orchestra and the 16-person State Opera Chorus, who were at times brought into the dance space to become more than sound.

From sounding like one voice to times when all four parts could be heard or a spoken voice was combined with singing voices, the chorus sound exquisite. Working with the dance, Sexton ensures that Glass's music is heard in new ways.

While there's spoken poetry in the text (given to the dancers and allowed to be delightfully funny), the music's lyrics are numbers and solfège. Like classic positions are the beginning of dance, counting and do-re-mi are the first things we learn in music. Everything on the stage begins with first steps and expands to something complex that's unimaginable at the beginning: just like how Einstein's theory changed physics.

Musically, Glass treats voices like instruments; they are sound without personality. But by seeing the singers and having them on the stage with the dancers, there was personality. I can't decide if I loved this or would have preferred the unexpected power of the Wilson emotionless/neutral face that dominates that original production. Seeing the personalities of the individual singers and dancers brings a warmth to the stage, but at the same time something like a singer watching a dancer or counting on their fingers distracts so much more than it should.

There were some initial problems with the amplified sound feeling stuck at the back of the stage and getting lost behind the dancers. This improved throughout the night, but still left it feeling like we were seeing the music through a wall of dance rather than the dance through a wall of music – which might have been the point.

The stage and lighting design were relatively simple and, while supporting everything on the stage with triangles, balance and light, didn't feel like an equal element of the production. I was in the front, so it may be more impressive from further back or in the circle.

Still the biggest disappointment was the number of empty seats and general lack of sense of occassion. Come on Adelaide, you do festivals brilliantly and here's your state opera company being trusted with a masterpiece of 20th century modenist composition. This is something to celebrate and support.

It's nothing like the original Einstein on the beach, but it's nothing less than it. It's a remarkable production that starts with Glass's music to create a work that feels like he wrote it for them, and reminds us to never be scared of seeing any work through new eyes.

There's still a full cycle left of all three operas (if I'd had time, I would have loved to see the others) and I suspect that the third cycle will be the one to see as they as word gets around that it's unmissable.

This was on AussieTheatre.com.

Nixon in China opens tonight.

Victorian Opera's production of Nixon in China opens tonight.

One of my biggest theatre regrets was not seeing the original version (1987) at the Adelaide Festival in 1992. Maybe because I couldn't afford it, but more likely that I had yet to discover John Adams's music and Peter Sellars's direction; after all, who wants to see an opera about a politician getting out of a plane.

Then in 2011, the New York Metropolitan Opera got the 1987 gang back and filmed it for their HD series. Josephine Giles and I sat in the Nova cinema for four hours on a February morning  and watched production filmed in January.

It was as close as we could be to being there and it was unforgettable in a way that still tarnishes most opera that I've seen recently. Here's Josephine's review.

And here's a 2011 interview with Sellars and Adams.




1992 was also the year I didn't miss Einstein on the Beach and I'll be seeing it in the same theatre in July this year. If you're planning to go (details), you should see Nixon as well (details). Adams music is often dumped in the same minimalist category as Glass; they don't sound anything like each other, but if you like Glass, you may love Adams.

And even if Vic Opera don't reach the heights of the Met, this is still an incredible chance to see this work performed.

Einstein in Melbourne again

In 1992, I caught the overnight bus from Adelaide to see Einstein On The Beach at the Melbourne Festival. I knew nothing about it, apart from the music was by Philip Glass (that guy with the neat film soundtracks) and that it had an almost mythical status as a masterpiece. This was my first time in the State Theatre and I didn't move for four-and-a-half hours.

First performed in 1976 in Europe and New York, Einstein launched the careers of director Robert Wilson and composer Phillip Glass. Its only Australian production was in 1992 and over twenty years later, there are five more exclusive Australian shows from 31 July to 4 August 2013.

There are shows that change how you see theatre; Einstein was one of those for me. Hundreds of shows later, I still haven't seen anything that's come close to it, including Wilson's I La Galigo and The Temptation of Saint Antony. 

With no narrative, its hypnotic meld of music, design and dance (Lucinda Childs) rejects any idea that communication is about text.

Overcoming a learning disability as a child, Wilson's earliest work was with disabled and brain injured children in the 60s. He used theatre games in hospitals and schools to enable and encourage communication with patients and children deemed unable to communicate. In one hospital show, his cast of patients were only able to make small movements with their hands or mouth. So he connected them all with photo sensitive string and showed how humans can visually communicate no matter how impossible it may seem.

His stage language developed from this time and it's why it's so hard to describe the experience of his work, because it's work that doesn't care for words.

Even more exciting than seeing The Temptation of St Anthony in 2007 was spending a couple hours in the State Theatre watching Wilson direct and perfect the first minutes of the show during a tech run. He's a scary director who demands respect with a precision that doesn't allow for vagueness, interpretation or spontaneity.  The first run of the show's opening was mesmerising. Then Wilson stopped the run and fixed it.

There was some spacing inconsistencies, he spent minutes directing someone how to sit on a chair, he told a hidden chorister at the back of the stage that he saw her move in her head before she moved on the stage, and he insisted on the exact speed of the removal of a piece of set (and that it was re-painted because there was some grey showing when it was lifted out). The next run of those minutes was already so different and by opening night it was perfect. These tiny details tend to go unnoticed, but that is what makes this director’s work so addictive. He takes a beautiful moment and makes it exquisite.

Tickets for Einstein in the Beach are available from 20 December at artscentremelbourne.com.au.

Here's Bob and Phillip (and Susan Sontag and David Byrne) talking about the reaction to Einstein  in 1976 in the film Absolute Wilson (seen at MIFF in 2006). Wilson produced it and sold tickets from $2 to $2000 and sat the $2 tickets next to the the $2000.

Last chance to see the All-Stars

Tonight is Melbourne's last chance to experience the sensational Bang on a Can All-Stars at the Recital Centre.

On Monday night,  they were welcomed to Melbourne with the kind of audience love that makes you crave live music. In the balcony a little boy waved as they bowed, while grandpas bopped like they were teenagers to the encore written by Thurston Moore.

I've had a serious crush on this group since I saw them in Adelaide in 1996, Barrie Kosky brought them to the Adelaide Festival, and I still feel like a groupie. They played music that I hadn't heard, in a way that changed the type of CDs I bought.  (And who knew Philip Glass was more than film soundtracks to get stoned to!)

If you missed Monday, here's a taste.



Tonight (Wednesday) they are joined by students from the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music in a concert that includes Brian Eno's Music For Airports, which has been transcribed for a large ensemble and BOAC founder Julia Wolfe's Big Beautiful Dark and Scary.

Wolf wrote this piece after watching 9/11 attacks with her two young children, two blocks from the Twin Towers. I've seen/read a lot of work about these attacks, but they always seem distancing. Music is the art that captures the emotion and lets us, who are so lucky to have not experienced anything like it, know for a moment what it felt like.

BOAC celebrated 25 years this year by giving fans a free download of the Big Beautiful Dark and Scary album. Wolf's piece can be described no better than big, beautiful, dark and scary, and I can't wait to hear it live tonight.

And here's the review on AussieTheatre.com

Bang on a Can All-Stars in Melbourne

The festival is over and for the first time in a few years, it felt like an arts festival again. Like the wonderful Artists Club of the 05-08 events, the Foxtel Festival Hub gave us space to mix and enjoy. Can we please never have another festival without this sort of space.

This week, it's time to sleep – apart from things like Bill Bryson's lecture on Wednesday and an MTC opening on Thursday – and next week is already filled.

I'm most excited about The Bang on a Can All-Stars first Melbourne concerts on Monday 5 and Wednesday 7 November at the Recital Centre. Details here.

WHAT! (just checking). It's true. The concert on Monday 5 November is FREE. Book here. Book now.

I first saw this group in 1996 when Barrie Kosky brought them to the Adelaide Festival. I went on a friend's spare ticket and am forever grateful. It was love at first dissonant note and I saw them three times. They changed how I saw contemporary music.

My favourite contemporary music experience to date remains their concert in the Adelaide Playhouse that ended with Philip Glass's Two Pages. Demanding, basic and hypnotic, its refusal to resolve drove many to leave (in awesome Adelaide huffy style), but left the rest of us weak. I've since played it a dinner parties – it doesn't work, but it's great car music.

Bang on a Can was formed in New York by David Lang, Michael Gordon and Julia Wolfe in 1987 with the first BOAC Marathon concert. Dedicated to making new music, the marathon concerts have run for 25 years.

The six-piece All-Stars were created in 1992. Freely crossing boundaries between classical, jazz, rock, world and experimental music, they continue to shatter any category and definition of concert music.

Sydney gets John Cage concerts (jealous), but Melbourne gets two (two!) concerts that are impossible to choose between.

First is the Australian premiere of Field Recordings, with nine new works that asked the composers to re-discover authentic American folk music and bring back sounds to challenge their own music. Using film, found sounds and archival audio and video, Field Recordings "builds a bridge between the seen and the unseen, the present and the absent, between today and the past". This is the FREE one.

Concert two includes the Melbourne premiere of BOAC founder Julia Wolfe's Big Beautiful Dark and Scary, written after watching 9/11 attacks with her two young children, two blocks from the Twin Towers. (After listening to this, also find John Adams's remarkable piece about 9/11, On the Transmigration of Souls.)

And they're playing Brian Eno's Music for Airports. I could start to rave, but I may not stop if I do.

Book of Longing

MIAF 2008

Book of Longing
Melbourne International Arts Festival
15 October 2008
State Theatre, the Arts Centre

“I follow the chorus from chaos to art.” (Leonard Cohen). Every time I think Philip Glass is becoming his own cliché, I see something new and fall in love all over again. Book of Longing is an impeccable night of theatre and one of my festival highlights.

I love Glass best when he’s working with voices and words. (Perhaps because I can kind of sing along at home). This concert quickly reminded me of his 1986 album ‘Songs from Liquid Days’, where he composed to lyrics from Paul Simon, Suzanne Vega, David Byrne and Laurie Anderson. And a look on my copy reveals that the music director of Book of Longing, Michael Riesman, also worked on this album.

Book of Longing is composed to the poetry of Leonard Cohen. By letting us listen to the words against a familiar soundscape, the almost predictable sound of Glass gives a remarkable clarity and perspective to Cohen’s poetry. Glass even says the work “starts with words and almost every musical decision is made in view of the words”.

What takes this event beyond a concert experience is Susan Marshall’s stage direction. With a natural costume design, which looks like everyone chose their own outfit, a simple lighting design and Glass’s song cycle structure, the evening flows effortlessly. The four singers move on and off the stage, among the musicians (including Glass) and simply sing the words. By not acting them out, the power of the words themselves becomes stronger and their impact greater.

A scaffold mosaic backdrop of Cohen’s artwork brings a very visual dimension to the night. Mostly self-portraits, nudes, guitars and birds, Cohen’s art work seems quite naïve and simplistic compared to his words, but they show his thought process and Christine Jones’s design brings a wholeness to the stage.

Finally, I’ll leave Cohen to describe Book of Longing. He said, “With no apprehension whatsoever I presented Philip with a book of poems and he presented me with this really stunning evening of theatre. There’s something quirky, something eccentric about Book of Longing. It seems to have an intimacy of thought and experience, and I feel that it embodies a new kind of sensibility.”

Really, there’s nothing more I can add. I loved it and can see it inspiring more people to follow their own chorus “from chaos to art”.

This review appeared on AussieTheatre.com

The Temptation of Saint Anthony

MIAF 2007
The Temptation of Saint Anthony
Melbourne International Arts Festival
13 October 2007
State Theatre, The Arts Centre

The problem of having high expectations is that they may not be met. The Temptation of St Anthony didn’t meet my expectations. It totally surpassed them. Musically, visually and emotionally it is exquisite. It gently grabs your soul and doesn’t let it go.

Robert Wilson (I La Galigo MIAF 2006, Einstein On The Beach MIAF 1992) is an undisputed master of western avant guard theatre. Last year we saw him his signature touch on traditional Indonesian dance. This year Melbourne sees his version of a musical. Wilson said he wanted a musical for this story because “it is universal and speaks an emotional universal truth”. The masters know the emotional power of musical theatre.

The Temptation of St Anthony ignores, subverts and breaks most conventions associated with musical theatre, but I can say that is simply the best and most powerful musical that I’ve ever seen.

Ironically Wilson doesn’t start with music when he directs. “I start with silence, then add the movement and at the end, the text or music”. He does, however, know how to find the most perfect musical collaborators. (Philip Glass composed Einstein On The Beach; Tom Waits composed The Black Rider.)

Bernice Johnson Reagon wrote the music for Saint Anthony. Halleluiah! Reagon was the founder and artistic director of the divine a capella ensemble Sweet Honey in the Rock. This score is based in the history of African-American music and culture and includes spirituals, blues, shouts, gospel, hymns, jazz, doo wop, hip hop and rock. The African-American cast of singers and dancers were selected for their mix of western training, church singing and folk orientation. She wanted a mix of old and young voices and they had to be able to move. Every member of this cast is sensational, even though Wilson takes away so many of their standard methods of communication.

Imagine the sound, the emotion and the movement of gospel singing. Now take away the individual personalities and take away any direct connection they have with each other and with the audience. The performers are performing for us, but never to us. They never look at the audience. It really is like they can’t see us. They also very rarely look at or touch each other, but are always working like an intricately connected machine.

Daniel Dodd Ellis plays St Anthony. He has a voice commands attention, whilst melting your heart. He is always on the stage, but he rarely sings. It’s not St Anthony’s story, but the story of his temptation and his journey. We don’t see character, but we do feel his emotion.

This may sound slightly disturbing. It is - and that is also why it’s so astonishingly effective. You don’t watch a Wilson show, you experience and feel it. It’s difficult to use words to describe the impact of a communicator who has so little use for words.

Wilson communicates with movement and colour. He developed this visual language by working with people who had severe difficulty communicating in our text based world. Wilson overcame a learning disability as a child and later worked extensively with disabled and brain injured children. Possibly his most important and powerful works have never been seen by the public. In the 60s he used theatre games in hospitals and schools to enable and encourage communication with patients and children deemed unable to communicate. In one hospital show his cast of patients were only able to make small movements with their hands or mouth. So he connected them all with photo sensitive string and showed how humans can visually communicate no matter how impossible it may seem. Wilson’s public frame and regard were established with his separate collaborations with the young artists Raymond Andrews (Deafman Glance) and Christopher Knowles (A Letter for Queen Victoria). Andrews is deaf and Knowles is autistic.

Some people don’t use words or eye contact or text to communicate. Wilson uses this style of language and that is why his theatre communicates so strongly with us, even if we don’t consciously understand how.

Everything on a Wilson stage is precise and controlled. There is no room for a spontaneous gesture, interpretation or even thought. This control becomes even more evident when the cast were released. During the curtain call, they bow and finally sing and dance as themselves. Suddenly the stage is filled with 16 unique personalities. The contrast is astounding and the emotional release of seeing them free is as powerful as seeing them contained.

Review of Absolute Wilson that originally appeared in The Pundit.

This review originally appeared on AussieTheatre.com.