Reviews

The great German composer Richard Strauss wrote many great operas, including Salome and Der Rosenkavalier,  plus the mighty tone poem Thus Spoke Zarathustra, which was to become the theme to 2001, A Space Odyssey.  In 1942, in his late 70s, his last opera Capriccio was written under the suspicious eyes of the Nazis. They needn’t have worried: this ‘conversation piece in one act’ exclusively asks “what matters most in opera — the music or the words?”

Innocence takes its audience on a journey similar to Cormac McCarthy’s The Road: a dystopic, amoral world that nonetheless inspires hope.

In his director’s note, Joh Hartog writes that “just like a really good piece of music, [Innocence] cannot be caught by a short description in the program.”

Nonetheless, us reviewers attempt just that: Innocence brings together a collection of outrageously idiosyncratic characters, draws blood from them, and then lets them at each other like sharks in a frenzy.

When director John Senczuk chanced to meet Sister Pauline Morgan of the Sisters of St Joseph in WA, she lamented that Perth had not publicly celebrated the canonization of St Mary McKillop.

Recalling the Her Holiness, which he had designed, Senczuk decided to mount the production.

The short multi-venue tour ran over Holy Week, and it was surprising that this well-constructed play was not playing to capacity crowds and that it wasn’t compulsory viewing for Religious Education students.