Candide

I’ve known Candide since the recording of the original Broadway production was released in Australia in 1957. My brother Robert must have been one of the first in Australia to own it. The thrill of the Overture, and of ‘Glitter and Be Gay’ - so magnificently sung by Barbara Cook - was fixed inside me. I’d never seen the show before this Victorian Opera version came up from Melbourne. It better be good.

The packed audience faced a battered setting. The lining seemed to have been ripped from the right-hand half of the stage, and a pile of rubble had been dumped downstage-left. Bernstein’s marvellous Overture came, but muffled by the orchestra pit, not loud and clear as in my memory. A curtain rose on a massed Opera Australia chorus – over 40 people standing in line at the back.

A large caravan was pushed on. This was to be the setting for the worldwide travellers, as they moved from their comfortable home in Westphalia and visited Holland, France, Portugal and Spain, then on to Buenos Aires, El Dorado, Venice, and then home again. Phew, no wonder the original show couldn’t get going.

Voltaire, nom de plume of the brilliant 18^th century French writer and philosopher who ridiculed the notion that this was ‘the best of all possible worlds’, is played by Eddie Perfect. Travelling with a team of trouble-makers and donning his wise old man’s overcoat, he puts a grin on proceedings.

His concentration is on young Candide, Lyndon Watts, with the huge shoes that curl back on themselves, and many Australian cricket bats to hand. Candide leaps and pirouettes, but to no avail.

Candide comes with a girlfriend, Cunegonde, played excellently by Annie Aitken. At first demure, she soon learns that the world is a different place to what she was expecting. With plenty of interesting men around, and money and jewels, she sings the major Bernstein song. And it’s quite thrilling.

There is plenty of action before ‘disease, old age and death’ eventually proves Voltaire correct. The pair settle down back home and try to make ‘their garden grow’. The huge, underused chorus makes their presence felt with a loud, tenacious and, for a breathless moment, an instrument-free declaration. Robert and I salute you.

Now about that pile of rubble stage left…

Frank Hatherley

Photographer: Carlita Sari