Track Works

With a backdrop of constant rumbling trains, the old gothic Mortuary Station near Sydney’s Central is perfect for this short and artful pastiche opera.

Track Works shows five people waiting for their train, a young lawyer fed up with her corporate job, a homeless artist, two schoolgirls out to make trouble and a station master who thinks his is the best in the world.

They sing the words and music of famous arias but, in bleachers up one end of the platform, the audience sees projected new words appropriate to their contemporary story. 

Thomas De Angelis’ new lyrics are full of wit, thoughtfulness and modern revelation, and are beautifully phrased to match the foreign language arias.

Anastasia Gall sings out her work frustrations to Gounod’s Romeo and Juliet; Eden Shifroni and Lily Harper scheme gay abandon to Verdi’s La Traviata; Michael Kaufmann struts his platform to The Barber of Seville, while from the shadows Sophie Mohler sings Dvorak’s “Song to the Moon”.

It’s a talented young cast, giving fine voice to landmark favourites, backed only by a recorded piano.  Director Clemence Williams keeps them moving and uses this heritage site imaginatively.

The schoolgirls bring welcome tricks and chaos to the platform – drunk on Mum’s spirits, upending bins and plants, and entangling all in toilet paper singing Carmen’s “Avec Gard”. 

The station master is bereft, but somewhat inexplicably the spirit of reconciliation descends, the girls turn remorseful and, to the sound of Madam Butterfly, the lawyer and the homeless artist hug in an unlikely unity of purpose. Lessons are learnt and shared values of human decency asserted and, transported, we say good night to Puccini’s glorious “Humming Chorus”.

Martin Portus