Reviews

I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change

Music: Jimmy Roberts. Book & Lyrics: Joe DiPietro. Savoyards - Name of Project (NoP) initiative (Qld). Director: Gabriella Flowers. Musical Director: Danika Saal. Choreographer: Desney Toia-Sinapati. Star Theatre, Manly. 17 - 24 March 2018

This long-running Off-Broadway revue was a perfect fit for the Savoyards audience - a middlebrow look at male-female relationships presented in a series of sketches and songs that covered nerds on a date, macho posturing, baby-talking parents, geriatric romance and others. Not the wittiest or incisive work in the world, the music mines the pastiche basket and lite rock, the lyrics rhyme (even if falsely at times), but it’s genial and undemanding.

Proof

By David Auburn. FREEFALL Productions. Directed by Derek Walker. The Q, Queanbeyan. 14–17 March 2018 and touring NSW and VIC

David Auburn’s Proof addresses the perennial problem of overestimating our knowledge, particularly our knowledge of others’ limits.

 

human requiem

By Johannes Brahms. Adelaide Festival. Rundfunkchor Berlin. Staged by Jochen Sandig and Sasha Waltz & Guests. Ridley Centre. March 14 – 18, 2018

human requiem (no capital letters) was the most amazing way to finish off the 2018 Adelaide Festival. This was the counterweight to delving the depths with warring kings, revengeful brothers and murderous uncles.

The examination of the human condition continued in the music of The German Requiem by Brahms, which takes its listeners on a journey that reminds us that we are mortal and will therefore die.

There is grief, that this is so, followed by gratitude for the life lived and acceptance that death is part of life, wonder and joy.  

Don Quichotte

By Jules Massenet. Opera Australia. Joan Sutherland Theatre, Sydney Opera House. Mar 16 – 28, 2018

Of Jules Massenet’s some 25 operas, Don Quichotte is one of his few to be still produced – and yet until now never in Australia.  

With the name role of Cervantes’ legendary old knight, tilting at windmills, the opera is a star vehicle, so it was a shock on opening night when Italian bass Ferruccio Furlanetto was announced as ill, and replaced by the young Australian understudy Shane Lowrencev.

Bennelong

Adelaide Festival. Bangarra Dance Theatre. Dunstan Playhouse. 15th – 18th March 2018

Woollarawarre Bennelong was an Eora man, from the Wangal clan in the Port Jackson area. In 1789 he was captured by order of Governor Phillip and taken to Sydney, essentially to enable the study of the “savage”. However, Bennelong learnt English and became a crucial intermediary between his clan and the colonial forces.

Carrie The Musical

Based on novel by Stephen King. Music by Michael Gore. Lyrics by Dean Pitchford/ Book by Laurence D Cohen. PRIMA. Directed by Drew Der Kinderen. Wongara Cultural Centre, Northgate. March 16 – April 1, 2018

Carrie, the central figure of the musical, is growing up unaware of the development of her body nor the school and world in which she lives. This is mainly due to the rigid control by her mother who is a religious fanatic, in the worse sense possible. Unfortunately, the school class members are intolerant and abusive to her. Sound familiar to the present day, with bullying so prevalent across much of our society? In one fight with her mother she learns she has telekenesis power and we learn later what that means.

Castles

Adelaide Fringe Festival. House of Sand. Holden Street Theatres/The Studio. February 28th – March 17th, 2018

The production company House of Sand is the creative brainchild of siblings Eliza and Charles Sanders. Having already won several awards for their collaborations, their strong works have not gone unnoticed and with Castles it does not take long to see why.

Entering the performance space, the audience is met with a strong female body clad only in black underwear. It appears that she is tangled up in her own arms, fighting to free herself from the constraints of her own mind. Deathly silence is broken only by the sounds of frustration.

Murphy

The Australian Ballet. State Theatre Arts Centre Melbourne with Orchestra Victoria - 16 – 26 March 2018 and Joan Sutherland Theatre Sydney Opera House with Opera Australia Orchestra. 6 – 23 April 2018.

It’s a rare thing for a dancer to have a career that spans 50 years. It’s still more rare that said dancer would change the face of the art.  Baryshnikov, Nureyev, Nijinsky, Pavlova, Fonteyn. They all changed the face of narrative ballet through their technique and presence. Murphy himself was a formidable onstage presence. It is, however, his off stage work which has made him one of the most influential dancers of our time.

Le Corsaire

Victorian State Ballet. The Concourse, Chatswood. March 17 and 18, 2018

Le Corsaire – or A Pirate’s Tale – is a ballet in three acts based on a poem by Lord Byron. The story is short and simple. Shipwrecked pirates Conrad and Birbanto, and a slave, Ali, are found on the shore by Medora and Gulnare. Conrad falls in love with Medora, Ali with Gulnare. Unfortunately the maidens are captured by Lankendam, a slave trader, and sold to a Turkish Pasha for his harem. The pirates search for the maidens and eventually rescue them despite betrayal by Birbanto.

Xenos

Adelaide Festival of Arts 2018. Her Majesty’s Theatre. March 16 – 18, 2018

Xenos is a Greek word meaning "stranger" or "alien". Just as Prometheus, a Titan who is credited with the creation of man from clay defies the gods by stealing fire and giving it to humanity, an act that enabled progress and civilization, the Adelaide Festival production, Xenos, is precisely the opposite, showing us mankind’s ‘gift’ to humanity, namely war, that makes us strangers on Mother Earth.

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