Review: Don Pasquale

Don Pasquale
Opera Australia
19 November 2014
State Theatre, Arts Centre Melbourne
to 12 December
opera.org.au

Don Pasquale. Photo by Jeff Busby

Opera Australia's Don Pasquale is alive and joyous. Without dismissing a note of Gaetamo Donizetti's opera, everyone on the stage and in the pit finds that little bit of extra love that lets everyone find the pure fun of being in and going to the opera.

Dobizetti's opera was first performed in 1843 and is based on recognisable and still-used Commedia dell'arte character tropes.

Unmarried and childless Don Pasquale (Conal Coad) doesn't want his nephew Ernesto (John Longmuir) to inherit everything, so he conspires with his friend Dr Malatesta (Samuel Dundas) to marry the doctor's young sister and send Ernesto packing. But Malatesta isn't as good a friend as he appears and conspires with Ernesto's girlfriend Norina (Rachelle Durkin) to pretend that she's his straight-from-the-convent sister and they set up a fake ceremony to make Don P think they are wed.

Director Roger Hodgman and designer Richard Roberts have set it in 1950s Rome to keep the original setting and show how little really changes. Inspired by the film Roman Holiday, the costumes are enough to inspire a retro 50 revival of super-high-waist pants, cat-eye sunnies and pastel baggy suits (and there's a get-the-look-guide on The Opera Blog), and the tone remembers that social attitudes in the 1950s weren't as stuffy as we remember.

Hodgman's direction lets the cast – all singers who make us want to hear more of them – work with the music to find the truth that connects them to their characters. Coad's frumpy and optimistic old man ensures that the audience are on his side and want him to win, despite his pompous behaviour and unrealistic expectations, and Longmuir and Dundas are equal foes to Don P.

However, Durkin's Norina is the unforgettable performance. Her singing is as clear and perfect as the first sip of cold Moscato as the sun sets on a summer day, and she lets Norina be a woman who rejects any societal shame in loving men, embraces her sexuality and is always in charge of her own destiny.

Even the chorus are alive as everyone brings character to the stage, and Orchestra Victoria, conducted by Guillaume Tourniaire, create and support the on-stage tone without forgetting that opera only comes to life with music that respects the composer.

Opera Australia have three operas Melbourne until early December (plus Tosca and Falstaff). Opera is often perceived as being an elite art where old men snore next to their subscription-buying spouses. Some of this is true (I think some come just for the nice sleep that have in a comfy chair), but let's break down these barriers. Opera Australia have lots of info on their webpage that can help first-timers and if more people support this art form, even more will be broken and we might begin to see how opera really is for everyone.

This was on AussieTheatre.com.

Review: Solomon and Marion

Solomon and Marion
Melbourne Theatre Company
12 June 2013
Arts Centre Melbourne, Fairfax Studio
to 20 July
mtc.com.au

In Cape Town in 2006, actor Brett Goldin and designer Richard Bloom left a party and never got home. They were found naked, except for their socks, near a freeway; they had been robbed and shot through the head.  Goldin was playing Guildenstern in a production of Hamlet  that was about to fly to Stratford to open the Complete Works Festival. Writer Lara Foot worked with the same theatre company and Solomon and Marion is the result of her trying to understand the incomprehensible – and incomprehensibly accepted – violence in her country.

It's a beautiful play. Its uneasy undertone of violence and mistrust creates tension, but it's gentle and loving and finds hope in the endless grief.

Marion (Gillian Jones) is an old white South African who lives alone in the Eastern Cape. She doesn't want to move to Australia to be with her daughter and grandchildren and leaves her door and windows open, despite the constant threat of violence. Solomon (Pacharo Mzembe) is the black grandchild of Marion's former maid and he turns up one day saying that he's been sent to see her.

In a world that's dominated by loss, poverty and guilt, Foot explores two people who cannot escape the violence and are secretly scared of their own complicity.

In a production where design (Richard Roberts, set and costume; Rachel Burke, lighting; David Bridie, music), performance and script work like one, director Pamela Rabe lets this very place-specific story resonate way beyond its South African borders. As its secrets are dug up and assumptions buried in the hilly floor of sand, Marion and Solomon try to understand why the other is in their life, each wanting the other gone, but terrified that they might leave.

But the night belongs to Mzembe and Jones.  I first saw Jones in the early 80s in Jim Sharman's Midsummer Night's Dream; when Mzembe wasn't even born. You don't forget the great actors when you see them, and on TV and stage, Jones is an actor who leaves ego aside and creates characters who live. Mzembe graduated from NIDA in 2007 and lets us see every nuance of Solomon's complex relationship with Marion, which begins with a confused mix of resentment, respect and pity.

This story had its roots in the kind of violence and loss that creates hatred, but it leaves the hate behind to reveal the broken hearts of two people whose have to live with its consequences.

Photo by Jeff Busby

This was on AussieTheatre.com.