Review: Das Rheingold

Das Rheingold
Melbourne Opera
3 February 2021
Regent Theatre
5, 7 February
21 February
melbourneopera.com

"Das Rheingold" Melbourne Opera. Photo by Robin Halls

If you're going to be the first opera back and the first production in the re-furbished The Regent after a year that left us wondering who was in charge at Valhalla, you may as well go Ring. 

And you may as well excel!

Melbourne Opera continue to dazzle with productions that are mostly funded independently and supported by sponsors and benefactors. Covid postponed Das Rheingold – twice – but the gods are back on side. And if you are unable to get to The Regent tonight or Sunday, Melbourne Digital Concert Hall are live streaming Sunday's performance.  And there's a performance in Bendigo at the gorgeous Ulumbarra Theatre on 21 February.

Das Rheingold  is the first part of Wagner's four-opera Ring Cycle, Der Ring des Nibelungen. In its full 15  hours, it's been live binged since it was performed as a cycle at the first Bayreuth Festival in Germany in 1876. There are "Ring nuts" –  people who travel the world to see ALL the cycles; passion for this story is obsessive – who are planning to be in Melbourne in 2023 for the full cycle, which will be the first Australian independent production of the cycle since 1913.

"Das Rheingold" Melbourne Opera. Photo by Robin Halls

Based on a Norse saga (the same one that inspired Tolkien and his Ring stories), there are dwarfs, giants, gods, golden apples, and a magic ring. It begins when a creepy man wonders why content and happy women don't fancy him, and decides that his having wealth and power will change that. He steals their gold and makes a ring that will give its owner power over the world. The gods get involved and they aren't much better at dealing with power and greed. Trickery, anger, bargaining, a goddess speaking the truth, death, despair, and a rainbow bridge follow. And Part 1 is just the prologue!

"Das Rheingold" Melbourne Opera. Photo by Robin Halls

The cast of Das Rheingold is relatively small but 140 Victorian performers and creators and technicians are involved (and Wagnerian conductor Anthony Negus from the UK). Covid restrictions meant casting locally and one of the exciting elements of this production is having singers from the company's Richard Divall Emerging Artists Program in principal roles. 

"Das Rheingold" Melbourne Opera. Photo by Robin Halls

 

 Director Suzanne Chaundy's consistent vision is neither past nor future but clearly reflects on the mythology and now. This opera was first performed in 1869, but its themes of power and greed are sadly still contemporary. Chaundy consistently supports creative teams that surpass any expectations of having limited resources. This production has the fraction of the resources available to other opera companies but is emotionally engaging, musically commanding and visually stunning.

The design team especially excel in creating an integrated world, despite some distractions like stage sound being heard and polystyrene looking a bit too much like polystyrene. Andrew Bailey's sets fly from heavens to the darkest pits using lifts, swing poles and ring motifs; Tobias Edwards's video is used sparingly to create magic; Harriet Oxley's costumes define  character; and Rob Sowinski's lighting connects all the elements and works with the music to support and the mood and momentum of the story. The holding back of some colours until the final act is especially wow.

"Das Rheingold" Melbourne Opera. Photo by Robin Halls

Ring nuts need no convincing to see this production, but it's a remarkable opportunity for newbies to discover what the fuss is about. Or merely use the opportunity to hear opera singers and an 80-piece orchestra in an historic theatre that was built for opera.

Review: Sunday in the Park with George

Sunday in the Park With George
Watch This
10 August 2019
Whitehourse Centre
to 10 August 2019
Geelong: 15–17 August
gpac.org.au
Melbourne: 21–24 August
mtc.com.au

Nick Simpson-Deeks, Vidya Makin. "Sunday in the Psrk with George".. Photo by Jodi Hutchinson

"White. A blank page or canvas."

The cliche of an artist opening a work of art by contemplating a space of nothing should feel as condescending as it is – but it doesn't. Bloody Sondheim; even his most indulgent work feels real.

Sunday in the Park with George is Stephen Sondheim's 1985 personal plea for theatre-goers to understand the process and importance of art. It's the sixth show Melbourne-based independent Sondheim-only company Watch This have brought us and one that looks at the work with their own perspective.

The original production starred Mandy Patinkin and Bernadette Peters, with the book by James Lapine. It won Tonys and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and is especially well known because it was filmed and released on home video (it's easy to find in YouTube; it's awesome). It was the show that Sondheim was never going to make because he declared he was quitting theatre following the heartbreak-cum-disaster of his Merrily We Roll Along, which closed after 16 Broadway performances in 1981. (If you haven't seen the documentary Best Worst Thing That Ever Could Have Happened, it's on Netflix; it's also awesome.)

Sunday is an imagination of artist George Seurat in the two years he was painting A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte (1884) in Paris, and his great grandchild George's reimagining of the work 100 years later with the super-cool computerised art of the 1980s.

It's a work that can feel difficult to sink into. In act one, the stories and characters have limited connections; there are discussions about pointillism, colour and art theory; and the protagonist is difficult to like as he connects more with a dog in the park than with his mother or his pregnant lover and model, Dot.

But even the best-worst name pun ever – his painting is a series of dots – is overcome as the act ends with an ensemble number that's as affecting as anything Sondheim has written. It brings all the disparate elements together musically and dramatically with a demonstration of "order, design, tension, composition, balance, light and harmony" that can't explain why it pokes emotions that you may not have known were there.

With a orchestra of four – four! –, Ned Wright-Smith's musical direction and Dominic Woodhead's orchestration focus on the transcending dissonance to harmony and supporting the singers to find the emotion inherent in every note.

Watch This don't have the resources to create the sort of design that productions of Sunday are known for, but Sarah Tulloch's design (with Rob Sowinski's lighting) looks at sections of the painting as it develops and has lots of fun with the 1980's version. And Rhiannon Irving's costumes let the characters feel like they really did come off the painting as the fabric is also coloured with dots.

Directors Dean Drieberg and Sonya Suares ensure that character leads everything on the stage and that the performers let the characters feel personal. This production isn't a deconstruction of a man able to spend his days making art that he thinks will change the world. It's not about the finished piece. It's about what he leaves out of the canvas (score/book/review), what he changes, and what he distorts to fit his idea of perfection.

Representation is far more than being peeved because your image is out of proportion.

The gaze of an artist rarely reflects reality.

As George's model, Dot is as much inspiration to him as she is irrelevant. He might love her but is far more passionate about her standing still or letting him finish that darn hat. Vidya Makan shows how easy it was for George to choose her, but she is confident enough to know that she can't get lost in her love for George. She doesn't resort to spite and knows that she's making the best choices for her, even if they hurt.

However, a production of this musical rests with George and George, who are played by the same person. The Georges aren't easy men to like unless you love them. Nick Simpson-Deeks's George is personal. He holds George 1's emotions so close that George barely knows they are there and George 2 is tightly wound and determined but open to being so much more. As he holds back the emotions, his performance shines as he lets the music and song show everything that George 1 would never say and what George 2 learns to express.

We sing what we can't say; that's how great musicals work. When George and Dot sing, we see who they really are; we see the flecks of light and dark. And parasols.

Watch This don't make us stand in the middle of the gallery and look at the work of a "genuis". This Sunday in the Park with George moves us to the corners and behind the crowds where the view isn't as clear and perfect. It's a production for us and for now.

They open tonight in Geelong and this weekend might be your only chance to see it because their Melbourne season is all but sold out because Sondheim fans know not to miss it.

Review: Merrily We Roll Along

Merrily We Roll Along
Watch This
30 June 2017
The Lawler, Southbank Theatre
to 15 July
watchthis.net.au

Nelson Gardner, Nicole Melloy & Lyall Brooks. Merrily We Roll Along. Photo by Jodie Hutchinson

My review is on The Music.

Review: Spencer

Spencer
Lab Kelpie
12 May 2017
Chapel off Chapel
to 28 May
abkelpie.com

Spencer. Lyall Brooks, Jamieson Caldwell, Fiona Harris, Jane Clifton. Photo by Pier Carthew

Independent company Lab Kelpie (Adam Fawcett and Lyall Brooks) have been quietly finding their space in Melbourne's theatre community with Fat Pig, Super Girly, Elergy and A Prudent Man. Discussing concerns, especially about the social power, and presenting characters that are too often ignored on our stages, they continue to bring us some of the most exciting new writing around.

Following the success of Katy Warner's one-act A Prudent Man at the 2016 Melbourne Fringe (performed by Brooks, heading to New York in November and back in Melbourne the same week), Spencer is her new full-length work. If this production – cast, design, direction, Lyall's undies – doesn't get picked up by bigger stages and/or tours the country, there's something wrong.

Going back to the family home makes the most grown-up of us behave with the emotional maturity of an 8-year-old wanting to play with a tired puppy.

Scott (Jameison Caldwell) is the younger brother of Ben (Brooks) and Jules (Fiona Harris). In his 20s, he still lives at home with his mum Marilyn (Jane Clifton), but he's the most successful in the family because he plays professional AFL. Ben's always there to offer advice, even if his own footy career didn't work out, and because he's had to move back in the family home. They are soon joined by 30-something big sister Jules who needs her old room again. Still, everyone is excited because Scott's two-year-old son, Spencer, is visiting for the first time. He may not have been around for his first couple of years, but he's family and is already considered more family than their father Ian (Roger Oakley) who hasn't seen his adult children since they were children.

Warner has captured an authentic and loving Australian suburban voice. It's confronting – we don't sound like that! Yes we do – and so familiar that it's easy to find the awkward comfort of laughing at ourselves.

Warner's characters are written from the inside out. They are so easy to laugh at, but they are always recognisably real and the reasons for their decisions and behaviour are always painfully clear.

This emotional undercurrent is supported with Sharon Davis's tight direction that lets the rhythm build and fall naturally and ensures a consistent tone that never lets the performances or the script fall into a world where we're laughing at them and not at ourselves.

And there's a lot of laughing – it's squeak-out-loud hilarious. With timing that reads the audience perfectly, each performer brings a touch of clown but they all start with the heart and humanity of their characters. They do and say the most horrible things, and we still love them like family.

Bryn Cullen's costumes of K-Mart chic uggies, too-bright colours and clothes-we-only-wear-around-the-house add to the comedy without feeling unnatural. As does the design (Cullen and Rob Sowinski) of faux-wood panels with cheaply-framed family photos, furniture and a stereo that were new (or off the side of the road) in the 1990s, and a green vinyl kitchen chair (that I want) that's slightly exaggerated and full of visual surprises. It shows us everything about this family and still feels like we've all lived there.

Even though we may not know Marilyn, Ian, Jules, Ben and Scott, they are our families. They are the frustration and  resentment, the in-jokes that aren't funny to anyone else – Coco Pops are now ruined –, the behaviour that's only accepted if you share a bond that can't be broken, and the love that makes all the bad feel worse and still forgives everything.

Warner's script should be published and this production left me feel as good as watching The Castle or Kath and Kim. It's hilarious and it hurts in all the right places because it's us.


PS. I only tweeted about A Prudent Man and Super Girly: they were both ace.

Review: Elegy

MIDSUMMA
Elegy
Lab Kelpie and Gasworks Arts Park
21 January 2016
Gasworks Studio Theatre
to 6 February
midsumma.org.au

Nick Simpson-Deeks in "Elegy". Photo by Sarah Walker

I'm away for most of Midsumma, but managed to squeeze this one in.

My review is in The Age.

Daniel Kilby is reviewing more of Midsumma on AussieTheatre.com.

Reveiw: The City They Burned

MELBOURNE FRINGE 2014
The City They Burned
Attic Erratic
6 September 2014
Cavern Table Performance Space
to 23 September
atticerratic.com

Photo by Sarah Walker

Attic Erratic's The City They Burned is a re-telling of the Genesis story of Lot and his family. I remember learning about godly Lot at my Anglican school: Lot is told by God and his angels to get out of town, Lot's selfish wife looks back at their town of Sodom and God turns her into a pillar of salt for questioning his will and valuing her materialistic life.

Like slabs of the Old Testament, the understanding of what makes a good person is subjective and bits of the stories are often missed in the telling. When I drew Bible story pictures at primary school, they didn't include gang rape, incest, incest-rape and God generally being a dick by destroying everyone, except Lot, with a rain of fire. And we didn't discuss how Sodom gave us the word sodomy.

This tale is from books – the story of Lot is also in the Quran and the Torah – that continue to control so many people's lives, morality and decisions. As long as these stories keep being told, we need to keep looking at them to try to understand and continue to question why they are still at the core of so much in our society.

Writer Fleur Kilpatrick says that she wants to question the concept of bad or evil. What did the people of the city of Sodom do to deserve being wiped off the face of God's good earth?

What would happen if God were removed from the story?

Is a godless world compassionless and devoid of hope? Is it any different from a God-loved world?

Photo by Sarah Walker

Welcome to Sodom, where Lot (Scott Gooding) and his wife Ado (Jessica Tanner) are our hosts at a party. Lot is the manager of the factory where the good men of Sodom (Brendan McCallum, Dave Lamb and Soren Jensen) work. No one has heard from anyone in nearby Gomorrah in the last hours and they are getting worried as the party is in the honour of two inspectors (Dushan Philips and Kane Felsinger) who have just left Gomorrah. These men are outsiders; they dress strangely and don't look like Sodomites; they don't drink and they have a power that no one really understands.

The theatre is a converted warehouse in Collingwood. The audience go into a large living room that's  op shop chic with touches of "I want that" and "the eyes are following me" (designed by Rob Sowinski). We're offered food on sticks and drinks – bring $5; you'll want a drink – and it takes a while to realise that the performance has started and that we're the guests at a party where there's no line between audience and stage.

Conversations take place concurrently or in corners that only some people can see. Some of the most telling action happens in reactions; don't feel bad for turning your back on an actor. The actors treat the audience like known friends or workmates and some people don't like their conversations being overheard.

At one point, I was the only person watching Thamma (Shoshannah Oks) and Pheine (Brianagh Curran), Lot and Ada's daughter's, and one gave me a look that made me look away. Not long after, Ada stood near me as the worst thing she could imagine was happening metres away and I wondered if I should comfort her.

Director Danny Delahunty ensures that the overall story is clear and keeps moving. The details are bonus secret moments that might only be shared between one person and an actor and may not happen at all in another performance.

As the mood of the party goes from fun to awkward to dangerous – the inspectors aren't there to do good –  the audience is made to feel more and more uncomfortable, and it takes faith to trust that we are safe and only watching a game of make believe.

Photo by Sarah Walker

The second half of the night takes place in an old attic that's been transformed into a more traditional theatre space. Here, the audience are allowed back into the safe role of unseen watchers, but the room is small and close and dark.

Lot and his family escaped to a cave that isn't dark enough to not see what happens in the blackness. There are worse things than being turned into a salty metaphor, and it asks: what would you do if you thought you were the only humans left on earth.

While the first half makes the audience feel complicit in the decisions made at the party (none of us objected), the second half makes the audience watch the unfolding consequences of those decisions.

It's not easy theatre to watch.

But it's theatre that questions how form and writing can work so closely that it's impossible to see where one ends and the other begins. Kilpatrick's writing is so beautiful and strong that it disappears and doesn't sound like writing because we're so immersed in the immediate experience of being in Sodom.

Meanwhile Delahunty's unseen control makes sure that the moments and connections that need to be seen aren't missed. In the cave, I kept remembering seeing Thamma hug her dad at every opportunity at the party.

And the cast are exceptional. There's no safely zone of a stage for them to hide in either.

The City They Burned declares Attic Erratic as the next independent company to make a mark so unforgettable that a hole would exist in Melbourne's theatre scene without them. In the last three years, they've developed from theatre graduates doing their thing (I called them vanilla) to theatre makers who are getting bolder and more unforgettable with each production.

The audience capacity for this show is very limited and is already selling out. Book now and don't wait until their Fringe season.

This was on AussieTheatre.com.

Review: Palace of the End

Palace of the End
Daniel Clarke in association with Theatre Works
6 June 2013
Theatre Works
to16 June
theatreworks.org.au

Tell your story, tell our story or tell a story that means so much to you that it doesn't matter whose it is. In Palace of the End, nice middle class, successful Canadian writer Judith Thompson tells stories about the wars in Iraq.

She wasn't there and her personal connection is living next door to an Iraqi family, so are they her stories to tell? She said in an interview with Canada's CBC, "Who would I be to write about it?  How do I dare?  But finally I trusted myself as a writer and made a leap.".

Her writing starts with facts about three people that results in three fictional monologues. Unlike verbatim theatre (like the documentary style of The New York Theatre Workshop's Aftermath about  Iraqi refugees, which left me shuddering),  it doesn't use the recorded words of real people and this mix of truth and appropriation is both disconcerting and powerful.

Disconcerting because not knowing the line between truth and imagining creates a distance from the characters and the work. Powerful because her imagining lets us see them as so much more than their worst or best recorded moments.

Each of the three could, and will, be remembered for their abhorrent acts and behaviour.  Private Lynndie England (Hannah Norris) was a 21-year-old US soldier who posed for photos with abused Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison. Dr David Kelly (Rob Meldrum) was a British weapons inspector complicit in the "sexing" up of facts, and Nehrjas Al Saffarh (Eugenia Fragos) was a member of the Communist Party of Iraq who let her sons be tortured.

Each story is disturbing and the facts are chosen for their shock and emotional impact, but what makes this production so striking are performances that find the humanity and a raw emotional honesty in each character.

And they are fictional characters. They are based on real people and stories assumed from limited public evidence, but the on-stage stories are fiction. And it's this fiction that takes each from a story so far from most of our experiences – a story about them – to one that could be mine or ours.

Norris, Meldrum and Fragos's performances are stunning, and what makes then so remarkably moving is their letting us see how easy it is to make choices that seem unthinkable when looking from the safety of distance and retrospect. As the fictional England says, "Imagine your weirdest second played out for eternity".

Director Daniel Clarke's gives his performers freedom to find personal connections with their characters, but ensures a completeness and bigger-picture by helping the audience to connect to the three and letting the three (who would never have met or crossed paths) reach and maybe understand each other.

Clarke's design team (Eugyeene Teh, design; Russell Goldsmith, sound;  Rob Sowinski, lighting) are rightly listed as equal creators and have made the Theatre Works space intimate and confining. There's no escaping to empty space and no where to look but at the people speaking. The long narrow stage lets Norris tell her story from what feels very far away, Meldrum's is closer and Fragos's leaves no room to ignore her, making the audience almost complicit in her story. The lighting and sound concentrate the emotion and the inescapable darkness and, with Teh's exquisite set, give the final air and breathing space that's needed before walking out into St Kilda and thinking about poppyseed cake or pizza.

Palace of the End at Theatre Works is a harrowing night of theatre with images and emotion that are difficult to forget, but its story about these horrors is beautiful and honest and ultimately hopeful. 

This was on AussieTheatre.com

Photos by Sarah Walker

Review: Triangle

Triangle
MKA
25 July
MKA Pop Up Theatre, North Melbourne
to 4 August
mka.org.au

Lesbian vampires. Do I need to say more?

Lesbian vampires in North Fitzroy.

A play with lesbian vampires, set in North Fitzroy, performed in an empty North Melbourne (really Kensington) warehouse by MKA. What more could you want?

And there is more. There's Piedimontes (the greatest worst supermarket), Chopper, Vince Colosimo, 4WDs that have never been as far as St Kilda, the guy who sells The Big Issue, the gardens where many a virginity has been lost and a soy-latte-addicted baby called Finnigan.

I love that theatre like this exists.

I love that its writing has been workshopped and developed and tightened,  and that it's creepy and beautiful and blood thirsty, and that its humour lets us laugh at our selves and inner-city community.  (Even if I transposed it to the Carlisle Street Coles in East St Kilda.)

I love that director Tanya Dickson (JATO) finds the theatre in the story's structure and works so closely with the design team.

I love that designer Eugyeene Teh has made another corner of this warehouse inseparable from this work and that he uses carpet squares. I love that Rob Sowinski's lighting and Russell Goldsmith's sound are such a part of the story telling.

I love that actors Elizabeth Nabben and Janine Watson found the dead hearts and bleeding souls of their characters and didn't let us dismiss their recognisable cliched outer selves.

Triangle is not going to be the work that takes writer Glyn Roberts (Horror Face) to the world (yet), but who cares when the world for many is that North Fitzroy triangle and it's captured with a mixture of cynicism and love that's as welcome as a marked-down fruit bun wrapped in plastic from Piedi's when you're really hungry and want to save your change for a pear cider later in the evening.

I love that Melbourne theatre is so much more than the ongoing big-worded tiff about Queen Lear and that The Triangle was so much better than staying in with a pizza and watching the Masterchef final, which is what I so nearly did.

You may now go and re-watch The Hunger and wonder why straight men think so much about lesbian vampires.

This review appeared on AussieTheatre.com

Photo by Sarah Walker

Review: Tuesday

Tuesday
MKA
9 June
MKA Pop Up Theatre, North Melbourne
to 23 June
mka.org.au

I saw a lot of theatre last week, but there was only one show that left me excited about theatre. And there's still time to see it!

What haven't I said about MKA? They consistently show new writing that makes me fall in love with plays all over again and they make it with creators I've rarely heard of, but will make sure that I see again.

Tuesday is an experience. This season's pop-up space is in North Melbourne. There was the Salvo's office in Windsor and the old Steiner School in Abbotsfod, and now it's an old North Melbourne warehouse; if you get lost, look for the people with LED lights. I hope they never find a permanent home because it's so much more fun creating theatre in places where theatre was never meant to be.

Their Winter 2012 season opens with four people telling us about their trip to the supermarket on Tuesday special price day. Never say that you need an complex premise to write an incredible story. There's a man (Zak Zavod) who sees a patch of blue on his ceiling and buys a tracksuit at the supermarket because he's never done so before, a woman (Jenny Seedsman) who buys peaches in jars for her husband who doesn't like peaches and knows how she'd act if she were anyone else, the supermarket manager (James Deeth) who redesigns an employee of the month certificate and tells us that his wife feels like a complete stranger when he's inside her, and a schoolgirl (Brigid Gallacher, The Most Excellent and Lamentable Tragedy of  Romeo and Juliet) who waves at security cameras to get any attention and makes us wish we were brave enough to shake the Coke bottles on the shelf.

Louris Van De Geer's script was developed by MKA through MKA@MTC and through Theatre Works. This kind of development support by funded companies is what's going to help create more incredible scripts by emerging writers.

And Tuesday is an incredible script. With images like swinging signs in an aisle, missing spice packets and a pyramid of tuna tins with an inflatable fish, she creates a vivid world that's beautiful in its suburban dullness. Its four monologues build the story without directly interacting. All they do is tell us about their trip to the shops, but its painful joy comes from a subtext that tells us so much about these compulsive and broken people. This builds an almost unbearable tension because we know something has to happen, but we have no idea what or when or who. When it does, it forces a re-read of the whole night and a search to remember the clues.

But great scripts need equally great creatives. There's a design (Eugyeene Teh) that makes old warehouse offices feel like they were built for this play; lighting (Rob Sowinski) that builds as much tension as the script; direction (Brienna Macnish) that captures the tone and pace of the script perfectly, possibly better than the writer could imagine; and a cast who make it feel like it was written just for them.

I think this is the most exciting piece of theatre I've seen this year. This company create with the kind of passion that doesn't listen to naysayers and cynics.  They believe that theatre is art and that art should wake up our brains and our hearts.  Or it could just be because I really like going to the supermarket.

Photo by Sarah Walker

This review appeared on AussieTheatre.com