Metamorphosis

Opera Australia isn’t too well-practiced lately in staging Australian operas.  But amongst the scaffolding in its cavernous Surry Hills workshop, the company picked the right place to revive Brian Howard’s expressive 1983 telling of Kafka’s nightmarish Metamorphosis.

Mark Thompson’s high metal backdrop of stairs and caged rooms, overhanging a stage cluttered with mountains of chairs and niches of period furniture, circa Europe 1915, all suggests an oppressively conventional life leading to insanity.  John Rayment’s shifting lighting, and the projected plagues of insects, help to further make our skin crawl.

No wonder that maverick of the theatre, Steven Berkoff, adapted Franz Kafka’s novella for the stage, and that Howard made it his libretto. From the start, Gregor, a depressed if conscientious salesman, awakes to find himself transformed into a monstrous insect.

Baritone Simon Lobelson is magically agile in both voice and movement, as his insect self crawls and sweeps across the scaffolding, and ably sings through Howard’s dramatically discordant score.   

Indeed, all of Tama Matheson’s excellent actor/singers give uniformly vivid and nuanced performances – as this haunted family and their two bullying visitors.

Christopher Hillier is the lazy, pompous father, Taryn Fiebig excels as the victimised but loving mother, and Tabatha McFadyen (with just a day’s notice) is Gregor’s ghostly fond sister … but all betray him by the end.   Adrian Tamburini is Gregor’s hideous employer come to drag him to work; Benjamin Rasheed is the demanding lodger who takes his place.

There are no narrative melodies here but conductor Paul Fitzsimon perfectly marries Brian Howard’s expressionistic score, dominated by strings, electric guitar and percussion, to Matheson’s drama, leaping powerfully between domestic horror and yearning. 

Martin Portus

Photographer: Prudence Upton