By James Elazzi. National Theatre of Parramatta. Director: Shane Anthony. Riverside Theatres. 25 July – 3 August, 2024

Reviewed : 27 July, 2024*

James Elazzi sets this play in a small town that set designer James Browne creates with symbolic telegraph poles and wires, corrugated iron and spindly bush. It looks a bit run down and neglected but seems to wrap around those who live there, keeping them close. On a rise above the railway line, teenagers Karim and Beth watch the trains pass and fantasise about the people they see through the window. It’s just a game, but their fantasies cover thwarted dreams and disillusion.

Karim (Youssef Sabet) lives with his father Joe (Andrew Cutcliffe). They work together, picking and sorting Lebanese cucumbers by day and searching through rubbish at night for things that can be repaired and sold to help pay the bills. Joe is upbeat, satisfied with his lot. Karim would have liked to go on with his studies, but he’s an only son, and Joe makes him feel needed … until Karim meets gentle, retired Lebanese musician Abdul (George Kanaan) who teaches him to play the oud, an old Middle Eastern instrument, and ignites different emotions and ambitions.

Beth (Alex Malone) lives with her mother Kaye (Jane Phegan),a drug addict whose mood changes and wily deviousness keep Beth tightly tethered. Kaye uses a form of coercive control, playing on Beth’s conscience, so that even when she tries to leave, guilt pulls her back.

Elazzi tells their stories in economic, down-to-earth dialogue – in keeping with the background he has devised for them and the push and pull of their relationships that are established and developed in short scenes carefully directed by Elazzi himself with the support and experience of his perceptive co-director and dramaturg Shane Anthony.

They manage the many scenes and scene changes with clear, sharp blocking and carefully planned choreography that is an integral part of the action – enhanced by the cleverly devised effects of sound designer Aimée Falzon and lighting designer Frankie Clarke. In shadowy light flashing in time with beating music, the cast slide a sofa away, carry a table off or on, change chairs, remove a small prop, bring on another – and then move seamlessly into the next scene, never losing character or continuity. It is a fine example of collaborative vision and close ensemble work.

Youssef Sabet gives Karim both the restlessness of youth and the sense of responsibility typical of an only child in a single parent family. His impatience with Joe’s lack of ambition is juxtaposed with respect and love. It is not until he meets Abdul that he feels free to be himself … and accept the complications that arise and the links to his Lebanese heritage. Sabet makes Karim open, aware, curious, accepting and resilient.

Abdul is the opposite of Joe. Where Cutcliffe’s Joe is over-enthusiastic, pushy, tough, clinging to the company and support he needs from Karim, Abdul is sensitive and retiring. George Kanaan makes him gentle, understanding, reticent, but open to Karim’s youth and talent and sensual appeal. Caught between them Karim struggles to be who they want him to be and being true to himself.

Beth’s single parent family is very different, and Alex Malone finds in her the stress that comes from being constantly on edge. Caught between disrespect and a sense of loyalty and duty that Kaye plays on ruthlessly, Malone’s Beth is tense, watchful, carrying a weighty responsibility that she covers with brittle brightness when she sits with Karim watching the trains carry away her dreams.

Jane Phegan brings a different brittleness to Kaye, a brittleness based on the highs and lows of addiction and dependence on her drugs … and her daughter. She moves from loving and caring to bitter and accusative, using her own guilt and lack of control to control and hold Beth. It is not an easy role and Phelan uses the wealth of her experience to make Kaye disturbingly real.

Two different single parents; two different forms of control; two teenagers torn between what they want to be and the ties that make that seem impossible. James Elazzi tells their stories clearly and this strong cast gives his characters the depth and complexity that make them and their problems stay with you long after the stage lights come down.

Also published in Stage Whispers magazine

*Opening performance

A Gathering for Manikay Performers. Improvising Soloists and Sydney Symphony Orchestra. Director Paul Grabowsky. Conductor Benjamin Northey. Concert Hall Sydney Opera House. 24th July, 2024

Reviewed : 24 July, 2024

Wata was developed over many years of collaborative improvisation begun in 2004 when composer Paul Grabowsky – distinguished Australian pianist, conductor, arranger and founder of the Australian Art Orchestra – first travelled to Arnhem Land to explore the possibility of potential musical collaborations. There he met Arnhem Land ceremonial musicians Daniel Ngukurr Boy Wilfred and David Yipininy Wilfred, and learnt of their manikay, “cycles of poetic invocations of time and place.”

Over two decades Grabowsky explored ways to combine ‘Western’ music with the traditions of the world’s oldest-continuing culture. Hugh Roberston, Editorial Manager of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, writes that “ With Wata … he has arrived somewhere new, old, familiar and unique all at the same time”.

Wata is a coming together of orchestral music and improvised music with the manikay, songs and ceremonial music of the people of Ngukurr, Southeast Arnhem Land.  Wata is based on the seven parts of the Djuwalpada cycle where an ancestral figure walks through the land creating the cycle of birth, death, regeneration and the things needed to sustain life – a cycle that represents a model of “a holistically interconnected universe.” It’s a universal theme that connects the past with the now and the forever.

This is the first performance of Wata since its world premiere in Melbourne in 2021. It introduces Daniel Wilfred – vocals and biḻma (clap sticks) and David Wilfred – yiḏaki (Arnhem Land didgeridoo) – to the Sydney stage, along with soloists Aviva Endean (bass clarinet), Peter Knight (trumpet and electronics), Erkki Veltheim(violin) and Helen Svoboda (double bass and vocals). And of course the wonderful Sydney Symphony Orchestra conducted by the very busy, energetic Benjamin Northey.

It was intriguing to listen to the original manikay sung by Daniel Wilfred accompanied by David Wilfred and the yiḏaki, hear them picked up and improvised by the soloists on their very different instruments, then orchestrated in Grabowsky’s composition played triumphantly by the orchestra.

Powerful, ritualistic words sung clearly, improvised by soloists who vary and contrast the motifs, then echoed and re-echoed in music created by an empathetic composer who brings the different elements together so they connect to become what Paul Grabowsky describes as a “living, breathing, organic musical world.

It was a privilege to be part of the audience for Wata’s first performance in Sydney.

Also published in Stage Whispers magazine

By Sergei Rachmaninoff. Sydney Philharmonia Choirs. Director Brett Weymark. Sydney Town Hall. Saturday 20th July, 2024

Reviewed : July 20th, 2024

Brett Weymark described his interpretation of Rachmaninoff’s Vespers as “a special performance that sits somewhere between ritual, concert and theatre”. It is indeed special – because Weymark had the vision of the choir moving into different formations signifying the four phases of the All-Night Vigil of the liturgy: sunset to night, through the night to dawn and the new day – Vespers, Compline, Matins and the First Hour.

How he achieved this is typical of Weymark’s inspiration and drive!

Imagine the Town Hall cleared of seats. Imagine a square in the centre of that space marked out by clusters of candles and fresh cut flowers. Imagine the remaining floor space laid with lines of yoga mats where some of the audience, like those in older times, would wait out the long night.

A transformation had occurred. Weymark had worked his magic.

As the light dimmed slightly, Anthea Cottee and James Beck with their cellos, and David Cooper and Jennifer Penno with their Double basses took their places in chairs in the centre of each side of the square. They would play the music Weymark composed to intertwine the movements of Rachmaninoff’s work.

From doors on the north and south walls of the hall came the choir in soft whites and creams, their faces illuminated by the soft lights of their songbooks. On a movable rostrum conductor Tim Cunniffe raised his baton… and the Vigil began.

It is hard to describe in a short review the effectiveness of Weymark’s direction and the skill with which the choir moved so adeptly.

At times they created a diagonal corridor through which soloists mezzo-soprano Hannah Fraser moved as they sang. At others they moved to pairs of parallel lines along each side of the candle-lit square. Once they moved out of the space and formed single lines along the stairs to the pipes of the organ and along the front of the raised stage. At another time they formed small circles of six to ten, facing each other, yet acutely aware of their conductor’s signals – especially as he also was carefully moved to different places on the ‘stage’. How unusual to see a choir moving, and with such calm control!

Each section of the Vigil was gently introduced by Weymark’s interludes, the notes of cello and the deep voice of the double bass echoing the deep resonance of Rachmaninoff’s skillful blending of old Russian chants and melodies and the more expressive music of the early twentieth century.As Rachmaninoff’s musical messages led them toward morning, some members of the choir began to move slowly out of the hall, while others carefully bent to pick up candles and place them in a sun-like cluster on the southern side of the ‘stage’. Saxophonist Nicholas Russoniello came down from where he had played earlier in the Vigil to stand beside that flickering ‘sun’ until the last chorister had disappeared. Then, out of the stillness and silence, the Hymn to the Mother of God – The First Hour – began, sung, symbolically, outside in the foyer, heralding the new day.

Just as it had highlighted the differing tones of the music, the movement of the choir and the passing day, Mark Hammer’s subtle lighting haloed the candles as their light and the last notes of the choir promised renewal. Hammer used mellow variations of light to nuance the changes in the music. Gobos threw white spots on a red background over the recumbent audience as well as the choir; appropriate shades of blue, mauve and red spread around the back of the gallery; an icy blue spot picked out Russoniello playing high on the stage steps. Hammer understood Weymark’s vision and coloured it creatively.

Others have written brilliantly explaining the different resonances of Rachmaninoff’s Vespers. That is not something to which I would ever aspire. What I can say is that between them Tim Cuniffe, the beautiful voices of the Philharmonia Choir and Brett Weymsark’s clever suggestion of the passing hours of the night made this peaceful theatrical performance of Rachmaninoff’s Vespers something very special.

Watch for the SPH’s next exciting programs at sydneyphilharmonia.com.au

Also published in Stage Whispers magazine

 

By Chenturan Aran. New Ghosts Theatre Company. Director David Burrowes. Old Fitz Theatre. July 5 – 27, 2024.

Reviewed : 14 July, 2024

Cut Chilli is a “coming-of-age” story of a different kind. It’s even bigger than that really – because though it revolves around inter-country adoption practices and “the wilful naivety around the broken systems that have enabled its darker side”, it reaches beyond that to our own dark history of ‘stolen’ children, forced assimilation, supremacist policies and racism.

Though Chenturan Aran’s play centres on Jamie, adopted as an ‘orphan’ baby in Sri Lanka, brought up in Western Australia in a predominantly white community, and becoming increasingly aware of the void in his life – his Sri Lankan heritage and culture, his birth mother, the details of his adoption – it also nuances the implications of being different – a different colour, a different religion, a different culture, a different generation.

It might seem a lot of “differents” to integrate into two hours, but Aran does so skilfully. He weaves them into the ‘family’ of his play: Jamie himself, his Muslim activist podcaster girlfriend Zahra, Katherine and Lee McKenzie, the white Australian couple that adopted him so many years ago and Jeff, his funny but very politically incorrect uncle. And explores them through the accusations, arguments and pain that result from Jamie’s searching questions

There is bitter confrontation, hurtful introspection, an upsetting revelation. The characters are real and colourful. The dialogue is economic, pithy, honest and director David Burrowes drives the action to match. It is fast, challenging, provocative, the conflict and tension lightened by humour including some very ‘dad-type’ jokes.

The tense friction that builds with successive scenes is juxtaposed with gentle translations of a Sri Lankan story recorded in the lilting voice of Nikki Sekar and told to the sounds and images of the sea projected on a scrim screen that stretches across the stage suggesting distance and peace.

Aran’s characters are carefully written and Burrowes and his cast make them immediate and real, especially Jamie and Zahra, played by 2023 NIDA and WAAPA graduates Ariyan Sharma and Kelsey Jeanell. Both make their stage debuts creating these very bright, fiery young characters who aren’t afraid to rock social, political or personal boats.

Sharma’s eyes and expressions augment Aran’s script to extend the implications of his words, and inject intelligent humour into his reactions. He realises the growing of strength of purpose in Jamie that Aran has written into the role, and the challenges of pace and pause that Burrowes has used to empower that strength.

Zahra is equally purposeful and Jeanell makes her frank, outspoken and unafraid to question, challenge or react – especially when faced with Jamie’s very uptight, suburban family. Her Zahra is energetic, very direct and just a bit devious.

Susie Lindeman and Brendan Miles play Jamie’s adoptive parents, Katherine and Lee. Both bring a wealth of experience to roles that demand underlying control and tension and outbursts of temper and emotion. Lindeman shows her strain in anxious gestures, vocal tremor and rising temper. Miles tries to hide it in humour and failed gusto, especially with Zahra who reacts to his cynical bonhomie with appropriate disdain – until the reason for their tension is eventually extracted – painfully – by Jamie’s persistence.

Lee’s brother Jeff is the ‘comic relief’ in the play – and Noel Hodda relishes every sick joke and PI comment that exposes Jeff’s open, unintentional offensiveness. He makes Jeff friendly, artless, funny, lovable – a buffer to the rising pressure that starts to erupt as the final scenes play out.

Cut Chilli has been produced by a creative team that is talented and insightful. David Burrowes’ empathic understanding and sensitive vision has been fixed and intensified on a set (Sohan Apte) that takes the action almost across an ocean, colours it with costumes (Rita Naidu) that contrast and blend and gives it sounds (Sam Cheng) that soothe and appease.

Like so much of the theatre being written and produced by new writers and indie companies, Chenturan Aran’s play breaks new ground in many ways. Congratulations to Lucy Clements for ‘remembering’ reading the play and, with Emma Wright, the New Ghosts/Old Fitz team, David Burrowes and his talented cast and crew, for realising it so effectively.

First published in Stage Whispers magazine

By Noëlle Janaczewska. Siren Theatre Company, The Loading Dock, Qtopia, Sydney. July 10 – 27, 2024

Reviewed : 13 July, 2024

The Past is a Wild Party is the final work of a trilogy in which award-winning writer, poet and academic Noëlle Janaczewska shares her varied research and personal experiences in a “performance essay” – a term which doesn’t really mean anything until you see the work of Janaczewska on the stage, especially when it’s directed by someone as intuitive as Kate Gaul.

In Good With Maps Janaczewska used memories of poring over her father’s maps to describe evocative travel dreams of “being elsewhere”. In The End of Winter it was her fear of climate change taking away crisp winter days and cosy firesides. The Past is a Wild Party is slightly different. Here she uses the almost hidden references in early queer feminist literature to relive her own memories of “passionate friendships”, those that were fleeting, those that lasted longer, and those that return as faded photographs and fond messages in letters received years later.

Snippets of research form the basis of her ‘essay”: the evocative words of the archaic Greek poet Sappho; the writings of nineteenth century English poet and novelist Amy Levy … and the Radclyffe Hall’s more explicit novel, The Well of Loneliness. First published in 1928, and banned in the UK, the USA and Australia for many years, “The Well” has become known as “the classic of queer literature”.

Few writers can share such wide research, learned reflection and wistful memories in words that are so clear, so poignantly poetic … and so performable. In the right hands, they can reach across generation – and gender – to entertain and enlighten.

Siren Theatre found those right hands in Kate Gaul and performer Jules Billington. With lighting designer Benjamin Brockman and composer Madeleine Picard they breathe life into Janaczewska’s words. They understand the theatricality of her writing. The changes in flow and cadence; the different rhythms, timing, pauses; the hesitations and the humour that give the words depth, complexity, and relevance.

Gaul sets the performance on a stage bare of props. The walls are black, the floor a shiny blue. Over twenty lamps, suspended at different heights augment Brockman’s carefully designed lighting. Billington, dressed casually in pink and blue, moves lithely in the space, her only prop a red covered copy of Amy Levy’s poetry – a symbol and enduring tribute to those brave “wild parties” of the past.

Gaul directs in harmony with the changes of rhythm, so that words and movement come together fluidly, heightened at times by Picard’s subtle, empathetic notes. She moves Billington carefully in the space, giving her time to stop and breathe, time to relate personally with the audience in wry smiles, short, silent, understanding eye contacts and still, shared moments of introspection. Time to let them take in Janaczewska’s quiet messages.

There is no confrontation, no edifying, no instruction in those messages. There is gentleness, thoughtfulness, illumination. Through Billington’s skilful interpretation and Gaul’s sensitive direction, Janaczewska does what Sappho predicted might happen so many years ago …

“Someone, I tell you, in another time will remember us.”  (Sweetbitter Love – Sappho c630-570BC)

A festival of six dance works by three choreographers. FORM Dance Projects. Riverside Theatres Parramatta. 6-7 July, 2024

Reviewed : 5 July, 2024*

sixbythree brings the rare opportunity to see how three different choreographers interpret the world in contemporary dance. Serious issues, unusual imaginings, personal reactions are told in dance stories that are contained and controlled in movement and rhythm and time. Five of the six performances are described below.

Cowboy

Creator/Performer Michael Smith; Producer The Farm

Michael Smith performs his creation Cowboy in the wide space of Riverside’s amphitheatre to a “free-roaming” audience, some of whom become part of a “wild west” experience where he lives out a fantasy that exposes “desires and vulnerabilities that exist in our pursuit to form identity”.

He enters the space as himself and wanders to an area where he sees “cowboy” clothes laid out. He stops, considers, then gives in to the chance to become his “imagined cowboy self”.

He strips and dons the dark trousers, shirt, waistcoat, boots and hat. As the transformation is completed, the music (composed by Ben Ely) changes to a faster rhythm. He picks up a lariat, trips into the noose … and becomes an untamed horse and rider, rearing and galloping until man eventually overcomes beast and they canter up to a saloon.

The piece then becomes interactive as Smith entices members of the audience to set up the saloon – the swinging doors, the bartender, a pianist, some drinkers. In mime he gives them movements to which he will return as he acts out a typical bar room scenario involving drinking, flirting, a dance routine and a cleverly staged slow motion fight.

Smith ends this scene sleeping off the effects until a change in music – bells, the sound of wind – rouses him and ‘dances’ him dream-like to another space where he picks up a bag, sets up a fire, plays a harmonica and talks briefly (in wild west drawl of course) about being a loner  until the sound of shooting sends him ducking, weaving and eventually falling to lie still in a pool of light that fades slowly.

This narrative is creatively perceived and cleverly performed. Smith combines dance and drama, using movement, characterisation, mime, humour and the power of suggestion to engage – and disarm – his audience in a form of storytelling that is universal.

Quartette

Lewis Major Projects; FORM dance Projects; Riverside Theatres Parramatta

Quartette includes “four unique repertoire pieces (that) investigate various poetic possibilities, universal rhythms and cycles”. The first of these is …

Two x Three

Choreographer Russell Maliphant OBE

To music composed by Andy Cowton, three performers – Clementine Benson, Elsi Faulks and Stefaan Morrow – weave an intricate routine that shifts between them, sometimes simultaneous, sometimes led by one or the other, always connected by movement, but strictly contained by space, confined as each is to a square of white light (designer Michael Hulls) shining from above. In that space they react to shimmering high notes, reaching slowly, the light above shadowing the contours their bodies create.

The movements Maliphant has devised are clear and carefully controlled, slow at first suggesting a sort of languor that changes as the music becomes faster, the percussive notes causing fast, contortive movement. Here the dancers are confined to a smaller square of black that appears within each ‘cell’ of white light. Despite the increased speed and complexity of the choreography, they never move outside the restriction of that confined space, their control and balance and their synchronicity sustained until the light above them closes to black.

This is an intriguing piece of choreography that shows the talent, fitness and amazing control of the performers – and how perfectly they are in tune with the rhythms of the music and each other. There was a just audible sigh of appreciation from the audience as the light faded on this first very interpretation of “universal rhythms and cycles”.

Mort Cynge

Choreographer Lewis Major

Camille Saint Saens composed the music for this beautiful but sad interpretation of a dying swan. Lewis Major’s choreography is delicate and demanding and Clementine Benson performs it with moving grace. She is a skilled artist, able to give the performance character and depth as well as executing the intricate fading moments of the elegant creature she depicts.

Carefully controlled leaps suggest memories of a time past, a stronger hold on life, a need to stay – all there in Benson’s face as well as her body as her swan clings on to the last few moments of life. Music and movement blend in this quiet, gentle dance story … a moving homage to Tchaikovsky’s ballet told in contemporary choreography that is delicately and evocatively executed.

 

Lament

Choreographer Lewis Major

Stefaan Morrow begins this third piece of Quartette. Major’s choreography to Italian operatic music gives Morrow the opportunity to show his artistry in a complex routine of leaps and twists, sliding at times, until a seeming realisation of weakness and defeat leaves him lying, still and lifeless. A woman approaches slowly, lies over him and gently brings him back to life. In this ‘new life’ he rises with the woman on his back – and for the remainder of the performance holds her almost as a part of himself.

Elsi Faulks never touches the ground in this difficult, strictly coordinated routine. She sits on Morrow’s shoulders, twists under him, is lifted above him, twirled around him as he moves them both in his new incarnation. This is a concentrated piece of choreography that demands perfect coordination, excellent timing and complete trust. Both performers need to be extremely fit and strong as well as in complete synch with each other and the music. Not once did they falter as they executed this complicated routine which was almost mesmerising to watch.

Epilogue

Choreographer Lewis Major

A dark Stage, A shadowy figure. A soft whispery sound. Light fades up slowly on a still white figure. Dust drifts from her statuesque hands and her long hair and settles in a powdery circle at her feet. Slowly she begins to move, each movement clouded by particles of white, her feet creating interconnecting circles in the fine particles in which she stands.

Clementine Benson is clothed in these fine white particles. They sift from her hair, waft from her arms as she reaches up to the light, puff from under her feet as she slides her feet in long, circling movements to music composed in the style of Debussy by Dane Yates.

This most unusual piece of choreography is true to Lewis Major’s ethos of presenting “surprisingly real dance works in multiple mediums”. It is challenging for the performer in choreography and control – and in the “costume” that permeates and diffuses with every movement creating an atmosphere that is ghostly and even a little macabre.

A strange Epilogue to this interesting Quartette  of contemporary “rhythms and cycles”.

Also published in Stage Whispers magazine

*Opening performances

By Francis Poulenc. Gente, gente! Opera Company. Directors Joanna Drimatis Bec Moret. Pitt St Uniting Church, Sydney. 21, 22, 28, 29 June, 2024

Reviewed : 22 June, 2024

Gente, gente! (Italian for ‘People, people!’) is a grassroots not-for-profit opera company producing shows “for the people, by people who love opera”. Many of those opera lovers braved a rainy Saturday night in winter to see the opening night of their production of Dialogues des Carmélites.

The production is interesting for several reasons.  Firstly, the company focuses on less commonly performed works, like this three-act opera by French composer Francis Poulenc. Poulenc, born in 1899, contributed widely to twentieth century French music. He served in both World Wars as well as supporting the Resistance poets by putting many of their verses to music. After a “spiritual awakening” he went on to write religious works, one of which is Dialogues des Carmélites.

But Dialogues des Carmélites is historical as well as religious. It was inspired by the true story of the Martyrs of Compiègne, a group of Carmelite nuns who, during the French Revolution, refused to renounce their vocation and were executed by guillotine in Paris in 1794.

Poulenc based the opera around a character called Blanche de la Force, who, terrified by horror of the Revolution in Paris, joins the monastery in Compiègne. When a few years later, the nuns take the vow of martyrdom, Blanche, overwhelmed once more by fear, flees back to Paris and works as a servant in her old home. On the day the nuns, singing Salve Regina, are executed one by one, Blanche reveals herself from among the ghoulish crowd and joins her sisters at the guillotine.

So, setting the opera in a church seems appropriate. Setting it in Sydney’s heritage listed Uniting Church suits the opera’s story beautifully. The church, designed by John Bibb and completed in 1846, is regarded as the best example of Neo Classic design in Australia – but apart from that, the high central pulpit is approached by twin cast iron railed stairs. Galleries supported on cast iron fluted columns run around the interior walls. All the fittings of the vast interior are of local cedar including the vestry behind the pulpit. What a fine space for a director to envisage an opera about religion and revolution and martyrdom!

Stage Director Bec Moret uses the twin stairways, the high, long central pulpit and the doors at each end to great visual effect. The transept and cross, cleared of furniture, is her main stage. All is highlighted by stage lamps in the gallery. Musical director, Joanna Drimitas, and her 16-piece orchestra use a cleared space under the high galleries.

Thirty-nine committed performers become the de la Force family, the steadfast nuns, townsfolk and revolutionaries. Dressed in costumes designed by Moret and Elena Charaeva, they take the audience back to France in 1789 and tell their story to music that conjures the unrest of the time as well as the the calm life of the cloister.

Soprano Sarah Cherlin plays the anxious, easily frightened Blanche de la Force. Cherlin shows that anxiety and fear constantly – in her clear voice, lovely inflexions and her face and gestures. Only in the monastery does she show Blanche a little more relaxed. It’s not easy to act and sing so emotionally or wait anxiously while others chastise or advise you in song, but Cherlin does so most effectively. She finds the drama in both the music and the role.

Joanna Dionis Ross is Madame de Croissy, Prioress of the convent, who takes Blanche under her wing but whose death Leaves Balnche scared and lost again. A mezzo-soprano, Dionis Ross finds the spiritual strength of the Prioress in notes that ring to the high ceiling of the apse when she first meets Blanche, but become more sombre as her health begins to fail.

Baritones Tristan Entwistle and Daniel Macey play Le Marquis de la Force and his son Chevalier de la Force, their powerful voices admonishing Blanche so often for her timidness that they are as much to blame for her leaving as fear itself.

After the death of the Prioress, Sam Lestavel, Laura Scandizzo and Sophie Bailes lead the nuns in some very beautiful songs and prayers. Katrina Mackenzie plays a very young, naïve nun who befriends Blanche and protects her when, with the nuns go before the father Confessor, played with energetic verve by Damien Noyce, to vote on the decision to be martyrs.

In their simple, flowing white robes and wimples the seventeen nuns are a picturesque sight on the red carpet of the twin railed stairs – and in a single line behind the pulpit as they await execution. That final moment of the production, with the nuns above,  groups of townspeople below, and Blanche approaching slowly down the central aisle is a lovely stage picture, which those in the first few rows of the church see most clearly.

Unfortunately, churches are not designed for theatre … so those who wish to see Dialogues des Carmélites next Saturday or Sunday night, my advice is to be early. It is general seating, and those first few rows allow an appreciation of the whole production – the setting, the direction, the singing the acting and Francis Poulenc’s atmospheric music.

Also published in Stage Whispers magazine

By Emmanuelle Mattana. Director Marni Mount. Seymour Centre. 19 Jun – 7 Jul, 2024

Reviewed : 21 June, 2024*

Like director Marni Mount, as soon as I read about this play I wanted to see it. I wanted to see how Emmanuelle Mattana would approach the intricate cobweb of the topic, how the stickiness of the web would become theatre, how the female cast would become the “elite private schoolboys” for whom Mattana would spin their web – and how it would entrap an audience.

As I read the ‘content warnings’ in the program, I knew I wouldn’t be disappointed! It looked like Mattana hadn’t held back – and the astonishing production proved it. Somehow this incredibly talented and intuitive playwright has managed to incorporate the themes of “entitlement, intellectual elitism, exclusivity, misogyny, classism, racism and homophobia” in a play that is confronting and compelling. It challenges it cast by demanding ‘drag’ and dance and dramatic dissertation. It challenges its audience by demanding recognition and change.

Mattana sets the four schoolboys in the rarefied environment of a closed classroom preparing for a competitive senior high school debate. The boys are bright, confident, used to winning – and derisive of their private school girl competition. They refer to competitive debating as the ‘game’ it is – where winning is the aim and arguing convincingly about something you know little about and probably don’t believe in are the ‘tries’ and ‘goals’ of the game.

When the boys find their topic is “that feminism has failed women”, their misconceptions and prejudices fire in a confusion of toxic anti-feminist, misogynistic arguments that are cringingly funny – and enlighteningly telling. Mattana hasn’t pulled any punches. They write from personal experience and recorded fact. How they write about it, how Marni Mount directs – and how the female cast boldly depict their schoolboy characters – make it challengingly and, testingly, believable.

Mount sets the production in a ‘closed’ classroom watched over by photographs of strong, internationally renowned women. In that environment the boys can speak with the enthusiastic over-confidence of the young and entitled. In their grey shorts, long socks, grey shirts, school ties, tartan blazers and badges of office, they dissect the topic with unmitigated verve – including a lewd dance routine and some childish bickering.

The acting of these four young women shows a remarkable ability to observe carefully and imitate effectively!

Emmanuelle Mattana plays Owen, the articulate, authoritative, wordsmith scholarship boy whose ambition is high politics. They make Owen bright, a bit touchy but quick to defend himself, annoyingly well-informed, and a little alone in the ‘team’. He is watchful, thoughtful, calculating – and, as it turns out eventually, the most able to manipulate and sway.

David is played by Leigh Lule who makes the character thoughtful, shrewd, always part of the action but able to step back a little and control when things get heated or inane. As happens when Scott (Gaby Seow) and Jared (Fran Sweeney-Nash) air their fatuous opinions or take the discussion off the topic. Seow makes Scott almost a by-stander at times, alert and involved but somehow apart – for reasons that become apparent later in the play.

Sweeney-Nash plays the ‘innocent’, knock-about, over-friendly “I love women” character, sometimes a little bemused by the arguments but solidly part of the team, until he feels the pressure of accusation … and a declaration from Scott.

Marni Mount describes Trophy Boys as ‘a masterful interrogation of the ways that entitlement, abuse and absolution are tied up with one another”. She commends the “pace, tone and language” of the play – and the cleverness of its construction – all of which she ensures are central to her direction. This play is one of a kind in so many ways and Mount realises its importance in this very frank and fearless production.

First published in Stage Whispers magazine

*Opening Performance

By Terrence McNally. Ensemble Theatre, Sydney. Directed by Liesel Badorrek. 14 June – 20 July, 2024

Reviewed : 19 June, 2024*

Lucia Mastrantone channels every strong woman, diva or director, in her stunning interpretation of Maria Callas. As she enters the stage she commands the attention of the audience, who immediately become the awe-stricken disciples of the master in action. She frowns as she admonishes them for applauding, and as silence falls, begins the lesson-cum-memoir that Terrence McNally has carefully researched and crafted. Though a diminutive figure, she affects the power and control of talent and fame and sustains in throughout a stunning performance.

A diva of Australian theatre herself, Mastrantone is no stranger to challenging roles, and Callas is challenging. Under the sure and perceptive direction of Leisel Badorrek, she becomes the famous diva for nearly two hours. With no opportunity to leave the stage, she keeps the audience – and her three nervous but talented students and a patient, tolerant pianist – on their toes and focused. Her eyes sweep constantly; her expressions and gestures, as considered and forceful as her words, leave no doubt that the woman she portrays is in control … but has worked hard to get there.

In moments of introspection she allows the ‘mask’ to slip and we see glimpses of the young singer working her way up … and the mature women caught between fame and independence and the coercive control of a rich and famous lover. Mastrantone finds the emotional recall of those memories poignantly but not wistfully – more as part of the armour that Callas felt the need to build around herself.

Musical director (and composer/sound designer) Maria Alfonsine becomes the accompanist for Callas’s students – portraying a studious, intense young pianist, a little cowed by the diva, but sure of her own ability and a little protective of the students for whom she will play. Blinking a little timidly behind her glasses, carefully aware, and reacting quickly albeit a little tensely to questions and instructions, Alfonsine establishes the character clearly and succinctly – as does Damian De Boos-Smith (also composer/sound designer) who plays a nervous stage hand as well as accompanying the young students in their master class.

Those students are played by Elisa Colla, Bridget Patterson and Matthew Reardon, all of whom portray differing aspects of appropriate nervousness in front of the diva … and operatic talent.

Their different reactions to her questions and critiques cover all the conceivable responses one might expect: anxious withdrawal, fretful despair, determined persistence. All three are highly trained musicians and their voices thrill, whether “faltering” under the gaze of the ‘master’ – or filling the Ensemble with song.

Leisel Badorrek directs with the precision and care necessary for a production that brings actors and audience together so openly – and the insight necessary to inspire a tightly disciplined compelling production. Brava Badorrek! Brava Mastrantone!

*Opening Performance