State Opera South Australia. Her Majesty’s Theatre. 16 Nov 2023
First-time main stage director Nicholas Cannon and State Opera South Australia have nailed it! Their production of Mozart’s much-loved (and much performed) opera The Marriage of Figaro is just wonderful. It deserves to be playing to full houses, and especially to anyone who thinks that grand opera is stuffy, elitist, or inaccessible. This production is none of those things. It has everything: fine singing, splendid sets, rib-tickling humour, lovely costuming, terrific lighting, and delightful music played by an orchestra at the top of its game. And, it’s sexy to boot, with just enough ribald humour to keep it all kicking along at a cracking pace.
Cannon has adapted the two-hundred-and-fifty-year-old story to the corridors of the Australian parliament in Canberra, and it is a stroke of creative genius. It smacks of a deep understanding of the thematic material in the story and a knack for knowing what will stand up to modernisation, and what will not.
Too many modernisations of classic operas fail to impress, because not everything is sufficiently well thought out. There is often something that grates, that is anachronistic, or that simply doesn’t work in some way. Indeed, State Opera has on occasions been found wanting in this regard, such as the production of Salome being set in a slaughterhouse, and Otello on the decks of a modern aircraft carrier. Cannon’s modernisation, with the inspired assistance of designer Ailsa Paterson, is as close to perfect as can be. The joy of what they have achieved is quite simply that the themes inherent in Da Ponte’s libretto speak afresh to a modern audience in a convincing and effective way. This production is accessible to all, and that is precisely what Mozart intended, and it was achieved with a largely local team of artists and creatives. This is something that South Australia can be enormously proud of.
The story of Figaro is well known, and it’s not necessary to recount it here. In the title role we have tenor Jeremy Kleeman. He is energetic, personable, acts well and sings even better. We don’t really get to see whether he can dance, but if he can, then it’s safe to say he’s a ‘triple threat’, but he’s not alone. This production has an embarrassment of riches with many fine singers and actors gracing the stage. Figaro’s love interest is Susanna, who is played and sung superbly by Jessica Dean. Her Susanna is flighty, quick thinking, witty, and cunning, and her pairing with Kleeman brims over with chemistry. Nicolas Lester plays Count Almaviva and gives him arrogant assuredness as he plays out his misogynistic misconduct (just like some politicians we all love to hate). Lester sang the role particularly well. Petah Cavallaro plays his wife, the Countess, and carefully evokes sympathy from the audience as the betrayed wife. Emily Edmonds was a standout as the mischievous Cherubino, and Pelham Andrews gives another fine performance as Dr Bartolo, as does Mark Oates in the smaller role Basilio (but he is so talented that he makes the role stand out). The principal cast is rounded out with Cherie Boogaart as Marcellina, Lucy Stoddart as Barbarina, Jiacheng Ding as Curzio, and Jessica Mills and Courtney Turner as First and Second Bridesmaid respectively. Jeremy Tatchell was wonderful as Antonio and looked very much like ABC’s Costa Georgiadis!
The State Opera Chorus play various roles including courtiers, hangers-on, reporters, staffers, and the like. Chorus Master Anthony Hunt has again drilled them to near perfection, and they, like the principal cast, move around the stage with purpose, elegance, and precision. (The program does not acknowledge a choreographer, and so one assumes that director Cannon must take the credit for this. His training as an actor clearly pays a dividend to the production!)
Ailsa Paterson’s scenic design is excellent and evokes the modern grandeur and stature of a parliament. (Some of the painted stonework looked a little less convincing than it might have, but who cares.) Nigel Levings lighting was again superb, and the occasional use of a follow spot was a pleasing addition.
The Adelaide Symphony is conducted by Tobias Ringborg, and he carefully manages the competing tensions of playing too loudly for the soloists, and not loud enough to overcome the occasionally troublesome acoustic of Her Majesty’s. He sets a perfect tempo during the overture and never wavers from it.
This production is so very good in almost every respect. Nicholas Cannon and State Opera South Australia’s The Marriage of Figaro is breezy, unpretentious, and manifestly able to be easily enjoyed by everyone (if the infectious enthusiasm of the opening night audience is anything to go by!). Don’t miss this production – it’s surely the beginning of a new and exciting period for State Opera.
Kym Clayton
When: 16 to 25 Nov
Where: Her Majesty’s Theatre
Bookings: ticketek.com.au
State Theatre Company South Australia. Space Theatre. 14 Nov 2023
“Is it you creating you, or am I creating you?”
Vi’s (Erin James) ponderous querying of the growing new life in her womb succinctly sums up many conundrums with delightful humour. Here’s a remarkably wide eyed, sharp, fresh take on the baby thing in Anna Goldsworthy’s stage adaptation of her book Welcome To Your New Life.
Director Shannon Rush’s production is a beautifully balanced one.
Intricate interloping layers of childlike innocence and confused, deliciously droll adult awareness are expressed in deft child orientated playfulness by the cast of three exploring the journey to parenthood, and beyond.
The work has a beautiful, soothing rhythm, buoyed along by Composer/Musical Director Alan John’s perfect set of songs evoking those ting ding-a-ling style sounds and feels of babyhood. James’ proves the right voice for these songs.
Rush’s approach is solidly supported by Designer Simon Greer’s terrific oversize child’s playroom set, featuring gigantic white double doors and massive number and letter play blocks, as well as a light-halo doubling as a humongous crib mobile.
Speaking of the light-halo, Lighting Designer Gavin Norris deploys it with great effect in the design mix. Norris’ series of colour washes interspersed with crisp spot lighting enhances and reinforces the sense of living within a child’s play world in which grown up people things become games to play out. For starters, did you know birth pain is a social construct? Truly!
Matt Crook and Kathryn (Kitty) Adams provide absolutely smashing support to James, playing numerous character vignettes which tease the funny bone as much as they prompt more serious introspection.
Crook as father to be Nicholas pairs with James brilliantly. Together, they successfully evoke the wonder and worry of new life to be. They do so in such a way there’s always a sense behind the performance of two kids playing Mummy and Daddy. This adds extra gravitas and comedy combined to the most outlandish and serious things they consider and fret over. In these moments, Adams offers pitch perfect punch lines. “You’re too happy to be in labour” was a crowd pleaser.
In some magical way, Welcome To Your New Life manages to talk about birth, motherhood and parenting in a completely new way. This achievement owes as much to Goldsworthy’s deeply honest, vulnerable writing as it does to a cast who manage to make it all seem so suddenly now in the moment.
David O’Brien
When: 10 to 25 Nov
Where: Space Theatre
Bookings: statetheatrecompany.com.au
Holden Street Theatres Inc. 9 Nov 2023
Thelma (Kathryn Fisher) sits alone hugging a stove pot on a lounge. Draped in a warm, comforting blue night coat, she stares relentlessly into nowhere.
Despite the warm hues of the room designed by Gary Anderson, varied splashes of colour from an oddly disturbing collection of art works on the wall, the overwhelming atmosphere is of grey, deep desperation.
She perks up and begins fussing about the kitchen, talking to daughter Jessie (Martha Lott) who’s off stage. Things seem a bit lighter. More properly homely.
Jessie’s entrance changes that. She emanates an even darker grey desperation; hair tightly bound, dressed in large loose red cardigan, grey track pants and track shoes.
It’s immediately clear mother and daughter have a functioning, but fraught relationship impacted on by dark misery at the core of their individual selves. On this night, it will be challenged and irrevocably changed when Jessie announces she intends taking her life.
Marsha Norman’s play fields a multitude of difficult, crippling experiences to be found in dysfunctional, codependent or controlling relationships involving private suffering. Her profound achievement is to get past blame games and seek what real truth beneath such living there is, even if it’s not a positive one.
This is an intensely difficult, and in many ways very dangerous, thing to attempt. Traps are everywhere in this work waiting to pull actors down to the level of dogmatic, schmaltz laden moralising.
Director Peter Goers and cast do not fall for them.
Goers’ direction works to pace the emotional interaction and duelling between mother and daughter in such a way it seems we are offered momentary views of the significant interior life moments that have shaped them. Interior moments of experience that are for Jessie are her truth, for Thelma, her curse.
“What is truth?” asked Pontius Pilate. Well might we ask them same of this theatre experience. Fisher and Lott’s daring, vulnerable performances are in service of ‘truth’ being unburdened of caveats and predetermined expectations. It is a partnership shorn of stylistic affectations and technique laden trickery into which the audience is irresistibly drawn in to share the disquieting experience of confronting what is best ignored.
David O’Brien
When: 7 to 25 Nov
Where: The Studio, Holden Street Theatres
Bookings: holdenstreettheatres.com
By Sarah Kane. Famous Last Words. Goodwood Theatre & Studios. 1 Nov 2023
Content Warning: The following article contains references to suicide that readers may find confronting.
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4.48 Psychosis is a love letter to British playwright Sarah Kane’s own psychotic mind. Scottish playwright and director - and Kane’s friend - David Greig, considered the play to be "perhaps uniquely painful in that it appears to have been written in the almost certain knowledge that it would be performed posthumously." Indeed, 4.48 Psychosis was first presented a year-and-a-half after Kane died by suicide. In her short 28-year life, Kane managed to write five plays, all rather dark. Harold Pinter knew Kane personally and remarked how he was not surprised to hear the news of her suicide: "She talked about it a great deal. …”
Kane didn’t encumber this work with a plot or even a specific number of actors. Director James Watson, who earlier this year wrote and directed his own highly praised adaptation of Strindberg’s Miss Julie, would have loved the ambiguity and the opportunity to pour out his creative juices. In amongst the psychobabble, poetic monologues, and dissociative fades, Kane (I’ll call the mentally ill character Kane just for the hell of it) was clearly fascinated with her condition and especially her relationship to psychiatrists and treatments (despised them), and from this, Watson devises a terrifically tragic and compelling narrative. Bravo!
Watson also employs a tremendous array of theatrical effects. The seating and stage set-up was like a Victorian-age university surgical theatre from a horror movie, or a Francis Bacon painting (Ruby Jenkins – production design). Handheld lighting and stark white brights from all directions created a chiaroscuro bleakness. Pills and other props set an abstract yet familiar scene. A voice microphone was used to no effect except to worry about tripping on the long cable. Reggie Parker’s soundtrack was menacing and tense. Watson used all this to build tension to a fabulous suicide scene of genuine surprise and deftness. I hope that wasn’t a spoiler.
The greatest challenge of minimalist theatre is the emotional quotients of the characters and there was room to improve here. Initially stilted and wooden, things heated up as the relationship between patient and psychiatrist intensified but longing and frustration remained surficial for most of the play. The audience should ache. Rhys Stewart’s matinee idol looks suited the tragic Kane, and with Watson they wonderfully utilised the gender ambiguity left to them by the playwright. Eventually, Stewart’s performance was compelling as his Kane played, consciously or unconsciously, with the psychiatrist’s conflicts. Arran Beattie chose to be a very uptight sort of psychiatrist, but his turmoil looked ingenuine. I’m glad he’s not my doctor because he had no idea what to do with a seizure. Unfortunately, for this soufflé to rise, we needed more ecstasy and less Temazepam.
David Grybowski
When: 1 to 10 Nov
Where: Goodwood Theatre & Studios
Bookings: eventbrite.com
*This review was edited after posting at the request of the creatives to remove references that were deemed offensive. A content warning was added along with contact details for 24/7 support services.
Bronwen James. Star Theatres – The Chapel. 20 Oct 2023
Reds is a cabaret about rangas that surprises as much as it brilliantly entertains.
Bronwen James is a ranga of a certain age who’s been in show business since she was 12. Reds offers a chance to reflect on her life and the lives of an extraordinary range of female redheads in history who changed the world through popular culture, politics and industrial relations.
The ‘didn’t know that’ educational side of this production is as brilliant as James’s warm hearted, comic and satirically biting takes on her life experiences, travails, and the long-lasting legacy of redheads past and present. Her take on Julia Gillard and Pauline Hanson alone are worth the ticket price.
James is high energy from start to finish. The laughs keep coming. Her song and dance routines are a snappy blend of vaudeville, quick costume changes, and multiple perfect accent shifts from scouser, to bogan, to American. Her adapted lyrics to well-known tunes are as biting and snappy as they are thought provoking.
Set, lighting design, costume and video projections are at high production standard. James knows how to do showstopper stuff right.
James successfully melds thoughtful contemplation of her life, a difficult year in which her mother died as well as dear family friend and performer Phil Skinner with the identity challenges being a sensitive redhead performer brings.
Those challenges are vast.
It’s this brave, authentic vulnerability James’s production is shot through with which makes it the complete experience it is. Connections between her story and those she regales us with make complete sense. There’s a tremendously hopeful consideration of what it means being able to step outside a stereotype and claim a personal identity.
David O’Brien
When: 20 to 27 Oct
Where: Star Theatres The Chapel
Bookings: trybooking.com