Reviews

Bangarra celebrates its move on to the main stage of the Opera House with Illume, created by Artistic Director Frances Rings in collaboration with celebrated indigenous artist Darrell Sibosado. Together with their creative team, they have created a piece of theatre that is physically beautiful and visually powerful. It integrates dance, visual art, music and thousands of years of indigenous culture and storytelling in the way that only Bangarra can.

The concept of this play is ingenious and plays with the conventions of theatre and documentary filmmaking in a very impish and innovative manner. Bub (Edith Whitehead) is an 11-year-old who uses documentary filmmaking as a way of managing some of the questions surrounding herself and her relationship with her parents. The script places Bub at the centre of the action and gives her great agency in the way the story unfolds. In fact, her parents are played in the documentary by two unrehearsed actors who follow her directions and read from scripts she provides. 

In this sparkling, complex fast-moving production of Caryl Churchill’s characteristically original take on The Information Age, director Belle Hansen, her collaborators, and her multi-talented cast ask multiple provocative questions about the facts, the fictions, the gossip, and the opinions that we tell each other.  Or else it’s the technological deluge of information that comes overwhelmingly from the media, or out of the sky or over the horizon.  Real news, fake news.  Science or superstition?  What do we make of it all, and who are we to make anything of

Melbourne Opera offers a great opportunity to experience this very dramatic opera. The story recounts the biblical tale predominantly from the perspective of the betrayal that Samson experiences. In this opera he is portrayed as a flawed heroic leader while Dalila is cast as evil and conniving. In this production both the characters are portrayed as icons of their respective cultures and the conflict between them.