Co-Opera. Burnside Ballroom. 17 Sep 2022
The storyline of Puccini’s short comic opera Gianni Schicchi – it comes in at around one-hour – is based on an episode from Inferno, the first part of Dante’s The Divine Comedy, and this production by Co-Opera is brim full of fun and fine singing.
Gianni Schicchi follows the machinations of members of the Florentine old-money Donati family as they whip themselves into a fury upon discovering that the estate of Buoso Donati, their recently deceased wealthy relative, has been bequeathed to the church and not to them. There is much wailing and gnashing of teeth, and very quickly Gianni Schicchi is called upon to attend the family and offer a ‘solution’. He suggests falsifying the will. This is a risky enterprise, and perpetrators will be punished by exile and amputation of the right hand if found out! Who is Schicchi? Well, he’s a brash and cunning chancer who is the father of the beautiful and virtuous Lauretta who is desperately in love with the fervent and handsome Rinuccio who is the nephew of covetous Zita who is one of Buoso’s cousins (phew!). It is Rinuccio who persuades the family to involve Schicchi hoping this will assist his fraught plans to marry Lauretta – fraught because she and her father move in an altogether different social circle to them.
Eventually it all backfires on the family and Schicchi double-crosses them out of the bulk of the estate. Needless to say, Rinuccio and Lauretta are united and Schicchi has the last say as he speaks directly to the audience and suggests that if the young couple were ever called upon to account for their involvement in the whole caper, the verdict would surely have to be ‘not guilty’!
Does it all sound delectably absurd, funny and imaginatively complicated? Well, yes it is, and arguably the whole opera draws heavily from the commedia dell'arte tradition, with Schicchi as the Harlequin, Lauretta as Columbine and the other relatives in various classic commedia roles. Director Stephanie Acraman understands this, draws it out through many fine performances, and has the audience laughing in stitches.
Gianni Schicchi isn’t a numbers piece – it is really only known for the beautiful aria O mio babbino caro sung by Lauretta, and even this emerges surprisingly (almost randomly) without a solid emotional build up. But let’s not allow that to stand in the way of the telling of a ripping yarn!
Co-Opera has assembled a terrific cast of experienced and emerging singers. In the title role, Nicholas Cannon exudes confidence, bravado, deceit and fox-like cunning, and his fine baritone-tenor voice was a highlight throughout the production. The audience reacted to him with laughter and delight as they would to the villain in a melodrama. Kudos to him and to Acraman.
Emerging artist Gianna Gutilla gives Lauretta a degree of innocence and her performance of O mio babbino caro is pleasing. Pianist Stephen van der Hoek provides a sensitive accompaniment and, importantly, gives her sufficient room to take the aria at a comfortable pace and dynamical trajectory.
Jiacheng Ding plays Rinuccio with youthful ardour. However, his final scene with Lauretta, in which they lovingly embrace, is perhaps a little overformal and lacking in the sort of passion you’d expect when two young lovers finally overcome the last hurdle. Acraman might have done well to employ the services of an intimacy director. That minor criticism aside, Ding’s tenor voice sang true and firm throughout the expanse of the venue. His performance of Avete torto! and Firenze è come un albero fiorito amply demonstrated his fine instrument and hushed the capacity audience, as did the love duet Lauretta mia, staremo sempre qui! he sings with Gutilla.
Meran Bow began a little hesitantly but quickly and firmly put her stamp on the role of Zita. The (necessarily) confined set didn’t always provide her with the room to take full flight! Bow is well experienced and understands that a role needs to be both acted and sung well. She succeeded in both.
Macintyre Howie-Reeves was excellent as Betto. He already has a fine tenor voice and it is getting better on every outing. It is easy to see him taking on more substantial roles in the future.
The cast is well rounded out with convincing performances from Brock Roberts (as Gherardo), Jessica Mills (Nella), Peter Dean (Simone), Oliver Vickers (Marco), and Bethany Eloise (La Ciesca). A special mention goes to Rachel McCall who plays three diverse roles – Gherardino, Spinelloccio and Amantio – with the latter two performed in true commedia-style!
Every performance venue provides its own challenges, and the art deco styled Burnside Ballroom is no exception. The stage is very small with no inbuilt theatrical lighting rig. Thankfully Gianni Schicchi only requires a single set in the form of a bedroom, but with a cast of eleven on stage and the trappings of a bedroom that screams wealth, space is at a premium and a little limiting at times, even with the addition of a small thrust stage. However, Acraman moves her cast efficiently around the available space and the action seems natural and unobtrusive in the main. The light is limited to a general wash with some attempts to underline the heighted emotions on stage with changes in hue, but these prove to be ineffectual.
There is no attempt to set the production in its original period Venetian setting, and costuming is generally contemporary. It works. Schicchi’s charlatan nature is heavily underlined by his grotesquely chequered blue, orange, black and white suit. It is just perfect! It screams used car salesman, and we all love to hate them!
Acraman milks the script for every laugh she can get, and the cast are up for it.
Mention was made above of Stephen van der Hoek’s excellent performance on piano. His solo performance of the entire orchestral piano reduction is a highlight of the production. Together with conductor Leanne Puttick, the cast is well served by sympathetic and competent musical accompaniment.
Gianni Schicchi is Co-Opera’s first production in two years. With the audience seated in cabaret-style enjoying bring-your-own picnic baskets at their tables, and without the bells and whistles available in grand purpose-built theatres, the recipe was not for grand opera, but it was. Co-Opera deserve our strong support!
Kym Clayton
When: Closed
Where: Burnside Ballroom
Bookings: Closed
Freefall Productions. 15 Sep 2022
Extraordinary how one can miss the memo; Wendy Harmer is a gifted playwright as well as stellar Australian stand up comedy talent.
Harmer’s script What is The Matter With Mary Jane? translating actor Sancia Robinson’s experience surviving anorexia nervosa into a one act play, is redolent with Harmer’s familiar cadences and comic pace. Yet there’s an incredible amount of room for Stefanie Rossi to work the material in a structural flow suiting her particular stage strengths and brave the challenge of a text demanding a highly attuned capacity to find dramatic nuance in dark comic moments.
Tackling a disease of the mind that finds expression as a fatal eating disorder in a comprehendible manner, without seeming maudlin, didactic or off putting is a hard ask. As much as it is not to offer it up too softly.
Harmer pushes Rossi straight into the audience’s face. She must address them directly, as herself. Herself playing out the memories, fantasies, excuses and suffering that is anorexia.
This melding of stand-up narrative monologue, peppered with sharp, biting, wit-laden imagery balanced against deep fear, insecurity, and submission to an inner demon, is spell binding. The text is peppered with lines raising many snorting shots of laughter amongst the audience.
Director Tony Knight and Lighting Designer Stephen Dean keep it simple, considering the level of deep human complexity they’re tasked with bringing to life.
Knight’s direction paces Rossi’s performance with shifts in and out of anorexia life experience and moments through the 16 to 35 year old’s life.
It allows counterbalance of comic observation, genuinely deep emotional distress and self delusion to build over the hour to the sonic climax of the production.
Rossi has a great capacity for unflinching, revelatory emotion. Comic work and timing is executed with deceptively playful abandon and sardonic finesse.
Dean’s lighting is uncomplicated but centres on creating a crisp black and white palette in which light spots rise and fall illuminating set pieces on a white tape marked stage with four narrow white bordered mirrors, a white table, toilet and black chair.
David O’Brien
When: 14 to 24 Sep
Where: Holden Street Theatres
Bookings: holdenstreettheatres.com
Performing Lines Production presented by State Theatre Company of SA. Dunstan Theatre. 6 Sep 2022
Evonne Goolagong stands tall in Australian history. As a luminous tennis talent, she remains a household name. Perchance she is the most beloved of all tennis players.
Hence, she deserves the highest of laudatory plaudits and, indeed, a stage play is not a bad idea.
Andrea James has made an extremely brave attempt at pulling this off, creating a stage work set largely on a moveable tennis court and, with set and costume designer, mounting it with a secondary population of audience in traverse seating on stage as grandstand viewers. It is great fun.
A big illuminated tennis net straddles the stage and an umpire’s chair whence the child Evonne, throws lines into an invisible pond and hauls out invisible fish, while rhapsodising about rustic life in Barellan, the NSW country town in which she grew up. The family home was fortuitously beside the town’s tennis courts. Her big and rowdy family is introduced bouncing around in the family car. This is achieved largely in exaggerated mime and, with the staccato narrative line and merry soundscape, one is forgiven for thinking it is a theatre production for young people . Thereafter, a high-energy production has the audience wondering if it is a bio-play or a musical. It is a multi-genre phenomenon in which tennis training and games are choreographic operations, the cast demonstrating pretty impressive ballet skills.
There is plenty of light comedy, but the script also pauses for some rather original didacticism. A lecture on tennis rules is as novel as it is probably unnecessary. But the playwright has tried to cover all the territory: a family story, a romance, a tale of exploitation, racism, and the highs and lows of the international tennis circuit. Gail Priest’s sound design swings along with all of this, illustratively versatile. The production lacks nothing in verve and good spirits. And the cast charms, albeit Lincoln Elliot struggles to sound English as Roger Cawley. The depiction of Margaret Court as the “giant” of tennis brings a hearty laugh. Yet, despite all the triumphs of Goolagong's mighty career, there is just such sadness at the way she was parted from her family. They were different times, those triumphant years. This comes home potently.
While Ella Ferris stands tall in the role of Evonne, it is Kirk Page who steals the show in an array of characterisations: from tough coach, Mr Edwards, to a trissy gay cameo. He is an exceptionally arresting actor. Jax Compton warms the heart as mum and gives mirth in male drag as John Newcomb while Katina Olsen’s balletic beauty shows why her name is also on the choreographic credits with Vicki van Hout.
Sunshine Super Girl is light, lively theatre which weaves a very special Australian story and, let’s face it, any excuse to celebrate Evonne Goolagong is a good thing.
Samela Harris
When: 6 to 17 Sep
Where: Dunstan Playhouse
Bookings: premier.ticketek.com.au
The PaperBoats. Goodwood Theatre and Studios. 26 Aug 2022
There’s nothing simpler than a kindy kid happily playing with a tennis ball.
But playing with a tennis ball and sharing it, is a different thing!
The Boy and a Ball is the most subtle, low tech, magical and highly intelligent engagement of a captive kindergarten audience you could want.
Performer Stephen Noonan created this work under the dramaturgical support and direction of Dave Brown. It is a masterpiece in exploring the subtle niceties, insecurities and joys of play, making friends and sheer magic. Dave Brown’s direction is most subtle, effective and unobtrusive.
Greg Cousins’ design of a cardboard cylinder fort of varying cylindrical sizes and James Brown’s wonderfully eclectic soundscape offer Noonan all he needs to play a soft, shy, gentle childlike human who slowly but surely makes friends with the audience and enjoys adventures with highly engaged, animated and loud commentary making kids.
The fort of cylinders is in itself magic. It can become a container, a torch, a magic trick. A means of shared play with a chosen kid happy to engage as the tennis ball is flipped back and forth.
The mastery of this work is its delicacy and respect for its young audience, their capacity to respond to it and be rewarded in that response by what happens before them by a supremely aware performer in Noonan.
David O’Brien
When: Closed
Where: Goodwood Theatre and Studios
Bookings: Closed
State Opera South Australia. Her Majesty’s Theatre. 27 Aug 2022
This is perhaps one of the best productions of La Traviata this reviewer has seen. It is fundamentally different to many others in one key element: the attention is thrown squarely on Violetta, on how she sees others around her, and how she responds to events. Often, productions of Verdi’s masterpiece focus as much on the perspective of the other characters in the opera – including the prevailing social mores of the day – as they do on ‘la traviata’ (translated as the ‘fallen woman’).
It is almost trite to say that the telling of an event depends on who is doing the telling, and in this joint production between State Opera South Australia, Opera Queensland and West Australian Opera, director Sarah Giles looks for every opportunity to hear from Violetta. Unsurprisingly, Giles relegates any hint of judgement about Violetta’s life style to the sidelines and there is recognition that for Violetta to do what she does requires instigation, and the willing participation, by men. This is underlined by an oh-so-funny scene in which men ludicrously run around in various states of undress in pursuit of satisfying their lust. But it’s not just funny – it’s also a not-so-veiled comment about how men control women and exercise double standards. In her Director’s Note, Giles aptly points to a contemporary example: Roe v Wade.
La Traviata is the story of Violetta Valéry – a high class courtesan – who falls deeply in love with Alfredo Germont but is encouraged by his father Giorgio to break up with him so that the ‘taint’ of her profession will not ruin the chances of Alfredo’s brother at a successful marriage. Violetta reluctantly agrees and reasons that she needs to really hurt Alfredo to achieve a separation. She also knows she is dying of tuberculosis, and in some ways this makes it easier for her to sacrifice herself for the benefit of Alfredo and his family.
Giles’ unapologetic focus on Violetta produces some atypical interpretations of at least two of the principal roles. We often see Giorgio Germont played with much more indignant self-righteousness, at least initially while he is laying out his case to Violetta. In this production Giles has baritone James Roser play Giorgio much more gently throughout. This has the effect of highlighting Violetta’s struggle with the proposition that is being laid before her, and Giles has soprano Lauren Fagan visibly fighting her inner demons and rebelling at the situation, before finding grace and surrendering herself and her own happiness to Giorgio. It was a telling moment in the production, and both Fagan and Roser sang the scene with bitter tenderness.
Giles has tenor Kang Wang play Alfredo with less earnestness than we might otherwise be accustomed to. Wang beautifully plays (and sings) the besotted young lover, but it is not syrupy and overemotional. This (presumably) deliberate portrayal again allows the audience to focus on Violetta and interpret her love for Alfredo as something of virtue, and not to be confused with the ‘affections’ she shows her customers.
Kang Wang and Lauren Fagan both give excellent performances – they both sing very well, and their stage-craft is unstilted and natural. At risk of body-shaming other principals in other productions, they are both attractive and ‘fit’ and the passion they imbue their characters with is all the more believable for it.
In the minor principal roles, Pelham Andrews gives an entirely believable performance as the philanderer Baron Douphol. Jeremy Tatchell’s Marquis d’Obigny and Mark Oates’ Gastone are also well realised, with appropriate measures of dignity and humour. The cast is rounded out with credible performances by Conal Coad (as Doctor Grenvil), Cherie Boogaart (Flora), Teresa LaRocca (Annina), and Jiacheng Ding (Giuseppe). There are no weak links, and the principals give truth to Stanislavski’s oft-quoted maxim that “There are no small parts, only small actors”.
But there is much more to a successful operatic production than a strong principal cast. Sarah Giles direction breathes new life into what is a frequently performed opera. Charles Davis’ set and costume designs are outstanding, with the set seamlessly transforming in front of our very eyes from a three room mansion to an expansive country house. The transitions are realised by members of the chorus and it is poetry in motion. The costumes are lavish, and not representative of any particular period, which assists in underlining the timelessness of the story. Paul Jackson’s lighting design is empathetic to the overall intention of focussing on Violetta. The Adelaide Symphony Orchestra is ably led by Oliver von Dohnányi: the pacing and dynamical balance are en pointe and never compromise the vocal output. Anthony Hunt’s chorus is very well prepared, and the expertly choreographed crowd scenes (and dance scenes and scene changes) are visually and aurally exciting, with precise cueing with the orchestra. With great attention to detail in the tableaus, we again have poetry in motion as well as in pictures. Intimacy Coordinator Ruth Fallon’s careful work ensures that the tenderest scenes are affecting and not contrived, and the bawdy crowd scenes make the point but are not offensive.
Giles has included some very evocative and affecting directorial touches. When Giorgio is explaining to Violetta that he fears his other son’s marriage will be imperilled by her relationship with Alfredo, we see upstage two softly lit members of the ensemble acting out a simple and stylised representation of the marriage about to founder at the altar. The way it is choreographed serves as a blunt reminder of the double standards mentioned above. It is beautifully done. This same dramatic device – seeing apparitions to underline the emotional arc of the story – is used again at a later point in the story with great sincerity. To say more would be a spoiler, but it leaves a lump in one’s throat.
State Opera South Australia’s production of La Traviata is simply outstanding: visually sumptuous, gloriously musical, and an emotional roller coaster. It’s everything opera can and ought to be, and not to be missed.
Kym Clayton
When: 30 Aug, 1 and 3 Sep
Where: Festival Theatre
Bookings: ticketek.com.au