Adelaide Festival. Festival Theatre. 1 Mar 2024
From the moment the performance of The Nightingale and Other Fables begins, it’s wonderment quickly engulfs you as you regress back to childhood when the distinction between fantasy and reality was vague. For the duration of the show, you are aware (just) as an audience member that your face is constantly smiling, and you are frequently and innocently uttering oohs and ahhhs. As internationally renowned Canadian playwright, actor, film director, and director Robert Lepage says in his program notes: “…each time, we should go to the theatre: with the open mind of a child”.
The Nightingale and Other Fables is the headline event of the 2024 Adelaide Festival, and it is truly remarkable. Please go if you can. It is a wondrous experience and celebration of exciting orchestral music composed by modernist Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971), superb operatic singing by both international and Australian artists, and world class puppetry including shadow, hand, and marionette puppets in which puppeteers, who are also singers, can be seen working them.
The Nightingale and Other Fables is a co-production of Opera national de Lyon, Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, Canadian Opera Company, and Dutch National Opera, in collaboration with Ex Machina, which is a multidisciplinary Canadian theatre company founded by Lepage himself. Ex Machina foregrounds the use of puppets in their various forms and their use is the perfect medium for bringing the stories told in The Nightingale and Other Fables to life.
The Nightingale and Other Fables is an all-Stravinsky extravaganza. It is a concatenation of Stravinsky’s short opera The Nightingale, which is performed after the interval, and other shorter works in the first half of the program. Both halves work very well together, and this ‘pairing’ was devised by Lepage for the 2009 Canadian Opera season. It is genius.
The first half of the evening is introduced by less well-known works by Stravinsky: some up-tempo jazz-inflected orchestral music and solo clarinet pieces, Russian folk songs, a song cycle about cats, and a performance of the small chamber opera-ballet The Fox. The clarinet is performed superbly by the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra’s principal clarinet Dean Newcombe. The vocal selections are carefully chosen to allow stories to be told through puppetry to the largest extent possible, and to create a sense of the unusual. The puppeteers are in full view of the audience who are exposed to their artistry in all its glory. It is often humorous, sometimes melancholy, but always thrilling. It is also an enjoyable challenge to divide one’s attention between observing the process of the art of the puppeteers as it is to watch the actual outcome. (“What are they doing? How did they do that?”). In fact, one almost feels like a voyeur at times but always rapt by the performance!
The performance of the opera The Nightingale is however the showstopper. The full might of the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra (including expanded percussion section, two harps, celeste, and an infrequently seen cimbalom) is upstage with the State Opera Chorus in two files in front, and a smaller acting area. The choristers have been beautifully prepared by Chorus Master Anthony Hunt, and are superbly costumed, with costumes, wigs and makeup designed by Mara Gottler. To top it off, the orchestra pit has been transformed into a swimming pool in which small oriental boats are paddled and delightful exotic creatures frolic. Carl Fillion’s set design is a visual feast, and Etienne Boucher’s lighting design carefully and evocatively reveals all its fine detail.
The plot of The Nightingale is simple. Based on a tale by Hans Christian Andersen, a Chinese Emperor is introduced to the beautiful singing of a nightingale, and is deeply moved. However, the Japanese Emperor makes a gift of a mechanical nightingale and the real nightingale flies away in disgust. The Chinese emperor later falls deathly ill and desires for the return of the real bird, who agrees to do so if Death will spare the Emperor, which indeed happens, and … they all live happily ever after. All characters in the opera are ‘played’ by exquisitely made and costumed puppets, and expertly manipulated by their singer/operators. The puppets are designed by Michael Curry and choreographed by Martin Genest. It is mesmerizing. Of course, none of it happens without people singing and bringing the puppets to life. The principal singers are all excellent, and feature sopranos Yuliia Zasimova and Yuliya Pogrebnyak, tenors Owen McCausland, Robert Macfarlane and Norbert Hohl, basses Taras Berezhansky, Jud Arthur and pelham Andrews, contralto Meredith Arwady, and baritone Nabil Suliman. They are well supported by the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra and conductor Alejo Pérez.
It is too easy to flatter this production, but it merits every single praiseworthy word.
Kym Clayton
When: 1 to 6 Mar
Where: Festival Theatre
Bookings: adelaidefestival.com.au
★★★★★
Adelaide Fringe. Ben Roberts. Grace Emily Hotel. 29 Feb 2024
During this performance, Ben Roberts notes that he primarily performs original music, and that you won’t usually find him performing covers outside the Fringe. But occasionally, he enjoys a deep dive into his favourite albums, and Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska is one of these.
The audience on this night is clearly happy that he has decided to showcase this album; bar for enthusiastic applause at the end of each song, the intimate space of the Grace Emily is almost pin-drop quiet during the performance.
Nebraska is an oddity in Springsteen’s career, it was made in 1982 post the incredibly successful ‘The River’ tour. As Roberts explains, he recorded a bunch of songs on a four-track recorder, playing all the instruments, including backing vocals. But when he took it to the E-Street band, they pushed most of it back and told him to release it himself. The result is this stripped back, raw collection of songs, with the title song a re-telling of the Badlands killing spree of Charlie Starweather, when 11 people were murdered by Charlie and his 14 year old girlfriend. Roberts added laconically that the death toll would grow exponentially by the show’s end.
Roberts presented this show for the first time in 2023, and for this production he’s gone beyond Nebraska and added some favourites from the Springsteen canon. He opens with Factory from Darkness On The Edge Of Town, which reflects the bleak despair of the elder Springsteen’s working life, a theme to be returned to on Nebraska.
The title song follows, then Atlantic City gets an almost hoedown treatment in parts, with Roberts demonstrating his virtuosity on the ukulele, pulling sounds that non-uke fans would find surprising and quite remarkable. After Mansion On The Hill, which again has Springsteen directing his gaze to the gulf between the haves and have-nots, Roberts brings out I’m On Fire (Born In The USA) before diving back to Nebraska and upping the body count with Johnny 99 and Highway Patrolman. Some very fancy fretwork comes with State Trooper, and the audience members applaud as he starts into the oh-so-familiar but stripped back Dancing In The Dark.
While the added songs inject a bit of light into the dark stories that are Nebraska, it is still the songs from that album that cut the deepest, and Roberts has developed this production into a masterful performance. A minor quibble is the sound where the bass is too loud at times, vibrating through the (thankfully provided) chair, but as a one man band, Ben Roberts presents a brilliant performance of storytelling, songs and impresario uke playing. What a deep dive.
Arna Eyers-White
When: 29 Feb to 14 Mar
Where: Grace Emily Hotel
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
Adelaide Festival. Dunstan Playhouse. 29 Feb 2024
In a sparsely-furnished, grey-walled room, a family sits around a glowing television. A woman slumbers in the double bed. A man folds clothes. The tinny sound of the tv bounces around the room. Dogs bark, traffic hoots and rumbles. The familial rhythms lull us into quiet observation. But gently, almost imperceptibly, the quotidian calm begins to vibrate with uncertainty. A black woman appears at the window, singing, a woman cries loudly then retreats into soft weeping.
A cabinet is wheeled to centre stage. It opens to reveal the lifeless, naked body of a young woman. The family gathers around her, smearing her with soil, then lifting her body centre stage, where she is washed, clothed in her unworn wedding dress, and surrounded by flowers. From here, we watch the family cycle through rituals of death and sorrow, some intimate, some solitary, some raw and scarifying.
Greek-Albanian director and creator Mario Banushi’s astonishingly assured second production meditates on the spinning, battling contradictions of grief. Inspired by deaths within his immediate family, Goodbye, Lindita is a profound and muscular insight into the unpredictability and elusive nature of sadness. It soothes and unsettles us. The piece is entirely wordless, constructed with progressing tableaux, as the emotional pitch of the performance shifts disconcertingly into turmoil and moments of chaos.
Banushi is assisted by a mesmerising score and sound design (by Emmanouel Rovithis), that moves from urban soundscape, through folk singing, to grating, buzzing interjections of noise. The sound tracks the changing emotional pitch of the scenes with brilliant effect. The lighting, too, (by Tasos Palaioroutas) is evocative: by turns murky, soft, and amber-hued like a Renaissance painting, bright and direct, and swirling mysteriously through fog.
The performance, at just over an hour’s duration, is perfectly paced, moving from modest, almost dull action into something monumental and emotionally jarring.
The scenes are precisely crafted and observed with unerring accuracy and compassion. That said, despite the undoubted meticulous creative process, there is no sense of artifice – it feels natural and organic. The images are both beautiful and confronting. There are moments of gentle intimacy – the family clustered around the television with the silent corpse, a belly-laugh coinciding with another’s wail of pain, and the exquisitely confronting washing of the naked corpse. Equally, we see moments of almost pagan turmoil, as the sisters shed their clothes and convulse in a frenzy. The spiritual world is near, but obscure: a black Madonna icon on the wall gives way to a portal to the unknown, a disembodied hand reaches through a wall to give comfort.
This is a beautiful, moving and powerful highlight of the Festival program.
John Wells
When: 29 Feb to 3 Mar 2024
Where: Dunstan Playhouse
Bookings: adelaidefestival.com.au
Adelaide Festival. State Theatre Company South Australia and Celsus in association with Adelaide Festival present a Belvoir St Theatre Production. Scott Theatre. 28 Feb 2024
Blue is a palpable one-actor play about a young man’s loss of family following tragic events, his ensuing grief, and his inspiring resilience. The young man is Mark, and he is very capably played by Callan Purcell. It is a sad, affecting, and at times humorous story. Although the main subject material is harrowing and not new, the sequence of events in the arc of Mark’s story, written by award winning actor and writer Thomas Weatherall, is novel and its telling is fresh.
Mark is a writer, and so when he tells his story, he inevitably delves into detail and luxuriates in words. From an audience perspective, this can be quite distracting because, like Mark, we can become more interested in the detail than the events that are being described. It is interesting that Weatherall should make his character a writer and then foreground the subliminal processes that writers go through as a significant part of the play’s narrative. In some ways, it detracts from the play itself and places considerable extra demands on the actor, and the audience who must listen very carefully and apply heightened concentration. It’s not an easy theatre experience to enjoy, but perhaps this is part of Weatherall’s intention.
Because the play was performed in the Scott Theatre, with its unforgiving acoustic, Purcell’s vocal clarity was often compromised which forced the audience to listen ever so carefully, and the use of floor level microphones did little to address the problem. The text was therefore carefully scrutinised. (Adelaide so desperately needs additional quality performance spaces.)
The set design (attributed to Jacob Nash and Cris Baldwin) is evocative, empathetic, and stylised. It is one of the highlights of the production. It comprises a slightly raised semi-oval shaped stage connected seamlessly to a curving similarly shaped wall. The whole thing looks like a giant opened bivalve mollusc, and it is made of a textured material that is ashen white upon which projections of seascapes and other images can be projected. The play’s title Blue is a nod to the ocean, but also to clinical depression, both of which are of critical importance to the plot line. At one point, the actor removes floor panels to expose a shallow pool of water under the raised acting area, which he then wades into and uses to underscore crucial moments in the plot.
The success of the set is contingent on the superlative lighting design by Chloe Ogilvie. It is truly outstanding in the way it supports and moves with the narrative and Mark’s mood and state of mind. Wil Hugh’s excellent sound design also adds gravitas and lightness as the text requires.
The staging is simple, with very few stage properties in use. The focus is squarely on the actor and the story line. The play runs a full eighty minutes, and actor Callan Purcell never falters in engaging the audience and maintaining an appropriate pace. As previously mentioned, the side stepping into detail occasionally deflects the momentum and Purcell works diligently to minimise the issue. Director Deborah Brown ensures Purcell uses the full capability of the stage, including partially stepping up the rear wall (and dipping back down) that gives the impression of life and circumstances bearing down on Mark.
This is another quality presentation from State Theatre, of what is a Belvoir St Theatre production.
Kym Clayton
When: 28 Feb to 16 Mar
Where: Scott Theatre
Bookings: statetheatrecompany.com.au
★★★★★
Adelaide Fringe. The Vault at Fools Paradise. 27 Feb 2024
It is the hottest day of the Fringe for this year, and we are in a plastic terrarium pretending to be a dome named – for some unknown reason – The Vault. The dim light used in The Vault (I’ve now seen 3 shows in this venue) sometimes detracts from the sheer power and athleticism of this show; two men and three women are showing virtuosity in their use of simple. Individual performance tumbles into teamwork, the groups move fluidly from one routine to another, and I find out later the cast of Apricity didn’t even get a technical rehearsal due to the heat.
Increasingly, they are playing with fire, quite literally as they work with cupped candles, then take on the metal rings for suspended acrobatic work. Perhaps for the first time the lighting is fully adequate, and the music completes the vignette, Moses Sumney’s Doomed providing an ethereal and moody aural backdrop.
As I hear this, and make note of it, an act which most nearly resembles the Whirling Dervishes routine unfolds on the stage, accompanied by one of the many versions of the absurdly catchy Yeh! Yeh!, on this occasion from los 3 sudamericanos. In some small way it made sense.
This is a show of proficiency and skill, of grace and acrobatics where the apparatus is less important than the performers’ ability to show mastery of it. It is a performance of strength and precision. It is engaging, but I’d love to be able to see more, particularly of the early part of the performance, it engages with the audience and takes them into the heart of the action but does not pander to crassness as other shows may do. It is, in all respects, outstanding.
As an aside I note that following the ravages of Covid, the Fringe has an opportunity to reclaim and reposition itself. For the first time in many years standup comedians are not in the majority, and the Fringe has become the haunt of burlesque and acrobats and of itinerant jugglers. It is much the better for this; it becomes much more the people’s festival, lively and engaged in guilty pleasures rather than allowing too many touring comics to drain the local economy.
Alex Wheaton
When: 27 Feb to 3 Mar
Where: The Vault at Fools Paradise
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au