State Opera of South Australia. State Opera Studio. 4 Oct 2019
Madeline Lee is the third in the State Opera of SA’s Lost Operas of Oz series. The other two were Boojum! and Christina’s World.
Madeline Lee was composed by John Haddock to a libretto written in collaboration with Michael Campbell. Its première was in 2004 at the Sydney Opera House by the Australian Opera. It has not been restaged since, which is almost unbelievable because it is so very good, and much kudos goes to the State Opera of SA for resurrecting it.
The opera’s plot is inspired by real events: the disappearance without trace over Libya of an American airforce B24 bomber in 1943 while on its first combat mission during World War II, and its subsequent accidental discovery some fifteen years later. Unlike in the opera, none of the crew of the B24 survive. In the opera, one crew member (the Major) survives – under reprehensible circumstances – and he ultimately finds the wreck some years in the future and his suppressed memories and deep feelings of guilt resurface.
The cast comprises eight male roles – predominantly baritones and dramatic tenors – and the harmonies and general tone of the opera are robust and macho. Because of the male vocal compass and the nature of the story line, the arias and ensemble pieces are intense and rarely cheery. In fact the whole thing is an emotional roller coaster which is deeply affecting. It is the sort of opera that must be seen and only hearing it without the visuals would be so much less satisfying.
Candice MacAllister’s set is simple: a vast stage covered in sand with a small amount of skeletal scaffolding that suggests the wreckage of a plane. Her costuming effectively invokes the destitute and hopeless plight of the lost airmen and the energy sapping heat of the dessert sun. Expertly lit by Nigel Levings, the visuals are all that is needed – there is nothing to distract from the unfolding psychological narrative and it works very well.
There is no orchestra in this production. Rather a spectacular reduction for two grand pianos provides a compelling accompaniment consummately performed by Michael Ierace and no less than John Haddock himself. The opera is almost two hours long, so both pianists have to work very hard, as does the conductor Warwick Stengårds. Haddock’s score is dramatic, and the libretto is unaffected yet visceral.
In the main, the vocal lines are not relaxed, with many ‘uncomfortable’ intervals to navigate and frequent intense fortes. It is not easy to listen to at times – there are no real hummable melodies that linger in one’s mind – but it is compelling and frequently has one on the edge of one’s chair, and this is due to the quality of the cast.
The standout performance is by Warwick Fyfe in the role of the Major. His training in Wagnerian technique was frequently called upon as he dominates the aural soundscape with his passion and consummate acting skills. The audience felt his pain and torment. Nicholas Cannon, Pelahm Andrews, Eddie Muliaumaseali’i and Robert Macfarlane played the lost airmen. It was fascinating to observe their disintegration from vital soldiers in dire circumstances to despairing and broken men who longed for but feared their terrible lonely deaths in the unforgiving Libyan dessert. Muliaumaseali’I in particular handled the vocal line with ease and his gentle vibrato and warm tone allowed him to be clearly understood at all times. The cast was capably rounded out by Thomas Millhouse, Joshua Row and Robert England.
State Opera can be justly proud of this production. This reviewer wouldn’t rush out to buy a recording of Madeline Lee but would certainly go and see another live production of it. It is dramatic stuff!
Kym Clayton
When: 4 to 5 Oct
Where: State Opera Studio
Bookings: bass.net.au
Gilbert & Sullivan Society. The Arts Theatre. 26 Sep 2019
Drag queens wear very high heels. They prance and pivot on perilous platforms. They are big and bodacious from top to toe. But, having the substance of male bodies beneath the bling, they do need heels which are as strong and safe as they are glamorously high.
Hence, the tale of Kinky Boots.
Man inherits failing north-of-England shoe factory, encounters a drag queen with a broken stiletto, and comes upon the idea of manufacturing specialised footwear for men in frocks. Of course, as the story is written by Harvey Fierstein in this popular Broadway musical, it doesn’t happen without lots of hurdles of tolerance and emotion. The factory workers are a diverse crowd and their boss, Charlie, is on a massive learning curve when he brings Lola, the drag queen, into the business.
It is a heart-warming narrative, a healthy modern-day morality tale adorned by the vivid exuberance of a troupe of drag queens. And, let’s face it, there is nothing to colour life more upliftingly than a drag queen or ten. The show, premiered in South Australia with this production, had winner written all over it before Cindy Lauper wrote the music and lyrics. She might have gone a bit overboard in that department. There are some very long and demanding songs.
There are also some fabulous dance numbers. It’s a big show about big people. That director Gordon Combes has blind-cast a diminutive Filipino performer in the principal role of Lola speaks very highly for the skills of Ron Abelita who sings, acts and dances his way over this proportional disparity and into the hearts of his audience. He’s adorable.
Also adorable is Ian Andrew as Charlie, the factory owner. His movie-star looks and his clean and powerful tenor voice make him an aptly pleasing presence. Charlie’s emotional strengths and dilemmas are core to the show’s credibility and Andrew supplies them all with boots on, so to speak, albeit he may never make a dancer.
Thus, with powerful principals and Paul Sinkerson directing a fabulously capable band with perfect sound balance between singers and instruments, G&S may brag another production of excellence.
There is massive cast onstage and some arresting support performances, not the least of them from Jemma McCulloch, Warren Logan, Ruby Pinkerton, Vanessa Lee Shirley, and James McCluskey-Garcia. As usual in a G&S show, the ensemble is made up of good voices giving strong choral backing. But, in this show, there also are the Angels. They are the six-strong drag queen troupe who high-step and sing, twirl and kick and flick their fancy tresses. Thomas Brodie Phillips is stand-out. Their costumes are not up to Priscilla standards but they make up for it with immense eyelashes and their own style of va-va-voom.
Not surprisingly, after the funny, razzle-dazzle closing number, the opening night audience members sprang to their feet in acclaim.
Samela Harris
When: 26 Sep to 5 Oct
Where: Arts Theatre
Bookings: gandssa.com.au
Joh Hartog Productions . Bakehouse Theatre. 25 Sep 2019
“Don’t step in the snow,” warns the Bakehouse’s Peter Green as audience members file in to see the latest Joh Hartog production, Brilliant Traces.
Indeed, there is a ring of driven snow surrounding the stage which has become a cosy cabin in the wilds of freezing Alaska. It is a splendid set, so detailed and intense that, in the close proximity of the Bakehouse, one is drawn inside across the fourth wall. It even features live cooking facilities whence soup aroma wafts through the audience.
The plot of this eighty-minute Cindy Lou Johnson play illustrates the similarities and differences between people who are fleeing from life and the mainstream. The hut’s occupant is a sad fellow in hiding from the world and his unexpected visitor is a grubby and exhausted bride who has just driven three thousand desperate miles from sunny Arizona rather than go through with her wedding. Cold feet take her to this coldest place.
The cold feet symbolism is interestingly exploited through the story as hapless Henry tries to care for not only this high-strung city girl but also for her fancy wedding shoes.
Thrust together in this confined space, the couple confront not only each other but the emotional needs that have brought them here. It’s often explosive cathartics and the clashing of souls in pain. Hartog seems to be in comfortable territory here as a director and the audience feels clasped close to the play’s thrashing emotions. It is altogether nicely crafted. And, of course, there is the potent performance of Brendan Cooney as hideaway Henry, his dense beard adding to the authenticity of his character. Cooney presents a painfully gentle, vulnerable character against the frustrations and furies of the unexpected stranger. Krystal Brock parries perfectly as Rosannah, the runaway bride, a character more memorable than likeable.
As usual, Stephen Dean’s lighting is perceptive and evocative. That snow-bound cabin feels like a living place, entirely credible as a domestic refuge in the wilderness.
Samela Harris
When: 25 Sep to 5 Oct
Where: Bakehouse Theatre
Bookings: bakehousetheatre.com
Windmill Theatre. The Space. Festival Centre. 21 Sep 2019
Live theatre is as amorphous as the air we breathe. They have made a film of Girl Asleep to immortalise the classic concept of the subconscious leaping to vivid life from the mind of playwright Matthew Whittet. But, nothing, simply nothing can replicate the wild, dangerous thrill of such theatre in its living moment. Hence, the revival of this Windmill triumph has been a magnanimous gift to audiences.
It is a work of surrealist high art. Bunuel, Chagall and Dali would tip their caps at the scale of Girl Asleep’s dream sequences. Indeed, it is breathtaking simply to contemplate the behind-the-scenes speed and technical finesse with which the five actors make spectacular quick-change embodiments of myriad characters and monsters to populate the stage with a leaping, dancing panoply.
The girl, who is called Greta Driscoll, is the static presence centre-stage as her bedroom morphs into other worlds and all manner of creatures slide out of the wallpaper. It’s her 15th birthday and her well-meaning 1970s parents have thrown her a birthday party she dreads with heart and soul. She is a shy girl who has started at a new school and endeavours only to avoid bullies and keep a low profile. She is befriended by Elliot, an awkward geeky teen, and together they try to insulate themselves from the cruel vanities of the mean girls, portrayed with exquisite satirical caricature as high-stepping blonde cheer girls.
Many are the unwanted experiences of coming of age, often left unspoken. But Whittet and the remarkable Windmill team have infilled the anxieties of adolescence with an almost unbearable, fast-moving dreamscape, accompanied by sounds so loud one shrinks in one’s theatre seat.
Sarcastic big sister explains some of the process to the hapless sleeper. She’s not the villain, after all. And, at play’s end, the whole racing, raving, shrieking, cavorting mayhem finds an extremely sweet and sensible resolution.
Superbly produced by the respected Windmill team of director Rosemary Myers and designer Jonathan Oxlade, Girl Asleep evokes bravura performance from the actors: Ellen Steele, Antoine Jelk, Amber McMahon, Sheridan Harbridge, and playwright Matthew Whittet. All are exhausting, complex, funny, and credible in their incredibility.
Girl Asleep began as part of a trilogy but has come to stand proudly alone as a strikingly potent piece of theatre. It sings, not only of the universal fears of growing up, but also of the Australian culture. And, for its fabulous actors, it is a showcase of skilful, witty cameos and dramatic styles.
Here’s to the shape-shifting otherworld of Girl Asleep regularly being reawakened in revivals.
Samela Harris
When: Closed
Where: The Space
Bookings: Closed
Pelican Productions. The Arts Theatre. 14 Sep 2019
New York Latino-type Lin-Manuel Miranda is definitely on a roll. Not only did he conceive of, and write the music and lyrics for this blockbuster, In The Heights, but he wrote the book, music and lyrics for another tremendous hit, Hamilton, which opened on Broadway in 2015 and will have its Australian premiere in Sydney in 2021. In The Heights played over 1000 performances on Broadway from 2008 to 2011. For his toils, Miranda won a Tony for Best Original Score and the show won Best Musical. He did even better with Hamilton – a Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and a record sixteen Tony nominations with wins for Best Musical, Best Original Score and Best Book. And here’s the kicker – he was nominated for a Tony for Best Actor in a Musical for BOTH shows! What a guy.
In The Heights and Pelican Productions are a perfect marriage. Pelican has been training youths aged 8 to 19 in musical theatre since 2004 and run a two-week boot camp every January. Director Emma Williams and choreographer Carla Papa manage to showcase a dozen main performers plus thirty chorus members in several of In The Heights’s larger-than-life numbers. But that’s just the half of it – there are two mostly different casts appearing in alternate performances – and just for the record, I saw the Red Cast.
Washington Heights is in the shadow of the George Washington Bridge in upper Manhattan. Perhaps formerly Irish, it is now an Hispanic neighbourhood of people with their heads full of yearning – for the American dream, to return to Cuba or Dominican Republic or wherever they came from, for amor, or simply to get out of the stifling heat and the same old beat. Miranda creates a kaleidoscope of characters, and the young Pelicans time and time again amaze with the veracity and nuance of their creations – including effective accents and body language. While the plot’s a little thin, In The Heights is really about dance, dance and more dance. With the focus on Latin beats, the energy that Williams, Papa, and Latin choreographer Joshua Angeles generate with their exceptionally talented cast is quite incredible. There is so much going on in the complex, rumbustious chorus scenes that one is sometimes overwhelmed.
All the main cast members convince in their pulchritudinous performances. And the singing is sonorous (musical director vocal – Rosie Hocking). Costumes by Kylie Green, Rosie Hosking and Emma Williams, and set by Jen Frith, Kylie Green and Kim Wilson took us further into the barrio. Music director Martin Cheney and his band remained hidden behind the upstage screen but blew the house away with their drive and precision.
This SA premiere of In The Heights is outstanding and it’s inspirational to see so much young South Australian talent having the time of their lives and performing so professionally.
David Grybowski
When: 14 to 21 Sep
Where: The Arts Theatre
Bookings: trybooking.com