Reviews

The name Hymen Arluck is not memorable. It’s a good thing he changed it to Harold Arlen as he embarked on his brilliant career as a composer. 

Except, as it turns out, that name didn’t ring as many bells as it should have, either. As a fan of his personal contribution to what has become known as The Great American Songbook, I must confess - in retrospect – that I probably attributed most of his songs to the Gershwins, Irving Berlin or Cole Porter.

The hallmark of this festival is the crazy variety of venues where performances are staged. We’ve got the 900-seat Princess Theatre, at one end of the spectrum, to literal hallways at the other. Not that the less glamorous situations take away from the performances - but when you juxtapose them with this particular venue - we really have travelled from the ridiculous to the sublime over these five days.

Forgive me - if there was ever a clichéd sentence waiting to happen - this is it: “Tyran Parke dreamed the impossible dream”. He did so by way of his introduction to proceedings. Apparently, way back in 2021 when he took the reins as Artistic Director and the festival was in its infancy, he vowed… 

“In five years, we’ll put on a big show in the Princess Theatre with the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra.” 

Tommy Murphy’s sensitive adaptation of Timothy Conigrave’s deeply personal memoir of his relationship with John Caleo places their story securely in its time yet also transcends time and place. It tells a love story that, in the words of director John Forbes is “uniquely theirs, yet deeply universal” – one that reaches across boundaries and generations.