Review: Into the Woods

Into the Woods
Victorian Opera
19 July 2014
The Playhouse, Arts Centre Melbourne
to 26 July
victorianopera.com.au

Photo by Jeff Busby

After the success of their Sunday in the Park with George (1984), Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine created Into the Woods (1986), which beat Phantom of the Opera at the Tonys and firmly sits on the top of many favourite-musical lists. Following the success of their 2013 production of Sunday in the Park with George, Victorian Opera have followed with an Into the Woods that's as close to sold out as it can be and even closer to perfection.

With a boldness, a sense of cheekiness and an understated sophistication, Vic Opera tell the tale with Australian twists and a loving understanding of the power of once-upon-a-time story telling. If you have a ticket, don't let it out of your sight because the show's simply unforgettable and reminds us that music theatre should never be a fading and dull copy of another production.

Lapine's book (he also directed the Broadway version) takes characters and well-known stories from the Brothers Grimm's collection of European fairy tales (mid-1800s) and sends them into the woods to find themselves together as part of a bigger story. Act one brings everyone through trials to their happy-ever-after; Act two asks what happens next and is as dark, confronting and blood-filled as traditional fairy tales really are.

Part of the inspiration for Woods was the 1976 book The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales by academic and therapist Bruno Bettleheim. Since his death (1990), Bettleheim has been criticised academically and personally, but his book continues to influence and inspire countless writers. Internationally successful Australian children's/young adult writer John Marsden (Tomorrow When the War Began series) is among those who recommend it. It's partly a Freudian psychoanalytic analysis of Fairy Tales (mostly the Grimm's collection) and the rest is a discussion about the psychological impact of fairy tales on children – or the importance of telling and re-telling stories. At the most simple level, we tell stories to understand the world.

But there's nothing simple about Into the Woods. From its surface of fairy tales and gorgeous syncopated rhymes (that Sondheim and his lyrics!), layers are torn away and complexities revealed until grown ups find themselves crying because they see it as a story about themselves. We re-tell stories to understand the world and our place in it.

And the music's by Sondheim, so it shares the every emotion without a word being spoken.

Photo by Jeff Busby

While one of the genius notes of Into the Woods is the complexity of its re-telling of known tales, much of the magnificence of Victorian Opera's production is how director Stuart Maunder lets the story be told without over complication or sentimentality, while supporting the comedy and freeing it from the so-well-known Broadway production that so many of us have seen because it was filmed for TV.

Adam Gardnir's design of bare trees creates an ever-changing wood that's comforting and familiar and terrifying and bone-like (with perhaps a nod to Freud), and the woods are given depth, darkness and magic flashes by Philip Lethlean's lighting. Which are all an ideal world for Harriet Oxley's costumes that take the shape of pantomime-fairy-tale costumes, but are filled with bold colour and geometric shapes that help tell a story that's for now and forever.

Conductor Benjamin Northey and sound designer Jim Atkins create a recordable pit–stage balance that uses the amplification to emphasise the unique sound of each singer, and helps to enforce the idea that stories are best told by human voices.

Vocally and emotionally the cast nail it. While Christina O'Neil (Baker's wife), Rowan Witt (Jack), Queenie van de Zandt (Witch), Josie Lane (Red Riding Hood) and Lucy Maunder (Cinderella) lead the way, everyone brings a real bit of themselves to their roles and every character has their moment of pure enchantment.

The only disappointment about Into the Woods is that it has so few shows and the tickets left can be counted on one hand (hint: try for singles). With producers letting sub-standard shows run for months in big theatres, surely there are ways to bring this production to a bigger audience. #IWish.

This was on AussieTheatre.com.

Review: Sunday in the Park with George

Sunday in the Park with George
Victorian Opera
20 July 2013
The Playhouse, Arts Centre Melbourne
to 27 July
victorianopera.com.au

Victorian Opera's Sunday in the Park with George is exquisite, and it's heartbreaking that it can only run for a week as so many people will miss this emotionally-perfect production of Stephen Sondheim's most personal work.

Sondheim wrote Sunday in the Park with George after his Merrily We Roll Along (1981) was booed by critics and closed after 16 Broadway performances. Urban legend says that he was ready to quit music theatre to write mystery novels, but writer and director James Lapine persuaded him to return and they were both inspired by a painting by George Seurat, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte (1884).

The resulting work by Sondheim and Lapine (who directed the first production) is a passionate and deeply personal exploration about being an artist and the sacrifices that accompany the choice to make art. It won Tonys for its design and the 1985 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and the London production won Oliviers, including Best Actor in a Musical for Australia's Philip Quast.

The first act is set in 1884, as George sketches in the park and develops his new style of painting (pointillism or neo-impressionism, that creates its images and colours from the human eye merging its dots of colour). The fictional story is about the people in the painting, including George's mother and his lover, who are both rejected by George in favour of his art. The second act is in the 1980s in America where George's great grandchild, also George, is trying to create and fund his digital work in a world of snobby art critics, and planning to show his interpretation of Seruat's work in Paris on the island depicted in the famous painting.

Alexander Lewis (who studied at WAPPA and is currently in his second year of the Lindemann Young Artist Development Program at The Metropolitan Opera in New York) is outstanding as the Georges. Musically, it's like Sondheim wrote for him and emotionally he grasps the conceit of a man who gives up love for art, without ever losing the empathy of his audience. Christina O'Neil (who was also at WAPPA and a new Red Stitch ensemble member in 2013) is his counterpoint as lover Dot (and his grandmother in Act 2). She, too, sings the music like it's hers, but it's the heart and understanding that she brings to Dot that is so engaging.

And they are supported by an ensemble who are each memorable, none lesser than Nancye Hayes, as George's mother, and an Act 2 art critic, whose Act 1 song to George is a masterclass in how to perform Sondheim (warning: bring a tissue).

Conductor Phoebe Briggs understands how Sondheim applied pointillism to music and ensures that the musicians and voices never let one outshine the other. While director Stuart Maunder (whose direction of Sondheim's A Little Night Music for Opera Australia left me cold) ensures that the story is led by the powerful emotions that created it.

But even for nothing else, see it for Anna Cordingley's design. The most famous productions of George won awards for design. Victoria Opera doesn't have a Broadway budget, but Cordingley has created something that's as creative and original as Seruat and Sondheim. The costumes are made with material that's digitally printed with Seraut's colour palettes. This makes them look like they walked out of a new version of the painting and visually unite the two acts in ways that past designs haven't. Her detail is intricate and, even from the circle, it's easy to see that every hat is a finished work of art and her parasols are as beautiful as the music that sings about them. Meanwhile the set uses all of Seraut's known works and her cascade of falling colours is such a simple idea, but genius in how it supports the story and George's art.

After the success of Nixon in China, Victorian Opera are continuing to put Opera Australia to shame with a production that deserves to run for months, if only to show everyone who sees expensive opera and commercial music theatre why reviewers like me complain when they miss the mark.

It finishes on Saturday and its nearly sold out. So book now. And full time students and under 30s can get $30 tickets.

This review is on AussieTheatre.com.

Review: The Mikado

The Mikado
Opera Australia
17 May 2011
the State Theatre, the Arts Centre

What is it about Gilbert and Sullivan? I try and scoff at the dated humour and chorus of ancient schoolgirls, but it's impossible not to enjoy a song about a snickersnee. And, dare I say, Opera Australia's current production of The Mikado is slightly better than my high school production in 1984.

Based on a UK production directed Christopher Renshaw, Stuart Maunder directs a fun and joyful Town of Titipu. It pays respect to the G&S traditions (like the fans and re-writing Ko-Kos list) and makes sure that it's as English as Liberty prints and baked beans on toast.

Tim Goodchild's gloriously satirical design clads the gentlemen of Japan in kimonos with bowler hats, brief cases and fans made from The Times and the little maids in satchels instead of obis and their pastel kimonos with lace and hearts are so girly that they make a Hello Kitty dress look butch.

The Mikado remains the most popular of these uniquely English operettas. It's the not-at-all-racist one about the man condemned to death for flirting, who seeks redemption in the love of a teenage schoolgirl, if only she hadn't caught the eye of a travelling musician. And it's not at all pervy when each respectable gentleman is paired with a schoolgirl.

It's best not to read too closely into the story and just enjoy Gilbert's rarely-equalled word play and absurd story and give in to tapping your foot to Sullivan's tunes. Most of the rest of the audience are tapping away anyway.

This is G&S that never loses the love in its parody as Nanki-Poo (Kanen Breen) prances and leaps, Katisha (Jacqueline Dark) snarls in emerald green and high heels and Ko-Ko (an inspired choice in musical theatre favourite Mitchell Butel) wheezes and schemes.

The Mikado is as wonderfully daggy as ever and has assured its place as a favourite for another 100 or so years.

* Ok, the only thing good about ours was that we really were schoolgirls "18 and under".

This review originally appeared on AussieTheatre.com

Photo by Jeff Busby

A Little Night Music

A Little Night Music
Opera Australia
15 May 2009
State Theatre, the Arts Centre

I had never seen a full production of A Little Night Music until now and Opera Australia’s version has supported my wonder at the Stephen Sondheim’s mastery, but it wasn’t this production that convinced me of its greatness.

As a remount of the original 1973 Broadway production (directed by Hal Prince), Opera Australia’s version is worth seeing for the historical value. The gorgeous and slightly ironic design still colours and supports the work perfectly and the evening lets us see how fulfilling and rewarding A Little Night Music can, and should, be.

Sondheim tears through to our souls and grasps the real emotions that drive us. A Little Night Music is about lust, passion and love. Act 1 oozes sex: Madame Armfeldt tells her granddaughter how she shagged kings, Désirée Armfeldt laughs with her old lover about her latest lover’s talents, the married Charlotte and Carl-Magnus Malcolm freely chat about his lover – and that’s a mere scratch of the surface. Everyone’s action is driven by their sexual desires and wants, even of its fear of sex or remembering what it once was - but everyone is with the wrong person - Charlotte and Ann confide, everyday is “A Little Death” as “Love’s disgusting, Love’s insane, A humiliating business”. Act 2 lets the need for love take over and this is where Sondheim’s remarkable knowledge into human motivation takes hold. This is in the music, in the lyrics and in the book – I just wish I’d seen more of it on the stage. For all the talent, what was missing was the lust, passion and love.

Conductor Andrew Greene is the star of the production, pitching and controlling the music to sustain and pace the emotion of the work, in a way not fully reflected in the performances. Vocally, the well-trained and experienced cast are ideal, with the mix of opera and music theatre voices adding a curious dimension to the characters. The refreshing and contrasting vocal qualities of Lucy Maunder (Ann) and Kate Maree Hoolihan (Petra) are especially welcome.

However, the inspired casting is Sigrid Thornton as Désirée. Thornton is by no means a singer, and never pretends that she is. Dramatically and emotionally she is on another level to the rest of the cast (with the exception of Nancye Hayes, whose Madame Armfeldt is perfect). Désirée is the character who we care about and the one who we believe. Thornton approaches her songs as her character and this is what nails it every time. It doesn’t matter if she barely sings “Send in the Clowns”, because she shows the irony of Désirée’s bitter hurt, regret and despair.

This thorough approach to character was missing elsewhere. There is no emotional consistency on the stage, as everyone seems to have their own interpretation of the work, especially with the male casting. Not one man on that stage let me believe that they were faintly interested in these women, let alone that they wanted them naked or that they loved them.

A Sondheim song is as powerful and enlightening as a Shakespeare soliloquy. We are privileged to see the hidden feelings of the characters; their secret thoughts and dilemmas that they would never tell anyone else. Early in Act 1, Fredrik considers “ravishing” (today we’d say raping) his teenage, virgin wife (who is terrified of sex); while Henrik, his depressed (and suicidal) son, despairs about his “intolerable” life, as he his dismissed by everyone who should love him. It’s not just about singing it well – it’s about showing us the raw emotion of the character.

I loved Stuart Maunder’s direction of The Pirates of Penzance, as it captured the fun and overall joke of Gilbert and Sullivan’s work. But you don’t direct, perform or even compare G & S to Sondheim. The heart of Sondheim is the drama and passion of complex, damaged souls. It’s filled with irony and comedy (it even reflects a French farce) – but it’s never a joke.

I wondered if I was being overly critical of a production that really does have a lot of marvellous aspects to it, until Google found me a YouTube clip of Sondheim directing an actor (his words) singing Henrik’s “Later”. I’m not comfortable comparing our national opera company’s production to a short YouTube video – but in a few minutes, Sondheim himself showed me how this production missed the mark.

Opera Australia is our funded, supported flagship opera company. With the astonishing artistic talent and skill available, and the ongoing support of audiences and funding bodies, this company should be consistently creating the best productions in the country and I shouldn’t find a YouTube video more emotionally rewarding.



This review originally appeared on AussieTheatre.com.