Latest reviews: John Williams at 90, ASQ, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Read the latest reviews by The Advertiser’s arts critics, including John Williams at 90, the Australian String Quartet and Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
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John Williams at 90
Adelaide Symphony Orchestra
Festival Theatre
February 11-12
What is film music without the film? It’s unreasonable to expect a film score in its entirety to stand up to critical listening by itself.
Especially when a basic principle of film music is that it shouldn’t be too interesting, otherwise it would distract the viewer from the onscreen action.
Inevitably then this tribute to the very prolific film composer John Williams, who turned 90 last week, was made up of a rather large number of small bits.
Perhaps there were too many small bits, since the concert, advertised as lasting about two hours, stretched out to two and three-quarter hours. Not that the audience seemed to mind; they lapped it up with unmitigated enthusiasm right to the end.
Conductor for the evening, and Williams tragic, Nicholas Buc observed that John Williams has done more than most modern composers to keep the orchestra going as an institution, and this is likely a fair call.
Numerous young people have been thrilled by the rousing sounds of the themes of Star Wars, Jurassic Park, and Raiders of the Lost Ark, probably their first experience of full-scale symphonic orchestral music. One can hope that for some this might spark a lifelong appreciation of orchestral music and even inspire a few to become orchestral musicians themselves.
Williams is a master of the traditional craft of composition and orchestration and a living demonstration of how the mastery of technique, combined with versatility, can lay the foundations of a career that in his case has now spanned seven decades.
He’s not the most original of composers or orchestrators – his orchestration is fairly conventional – but he has absorbed many different influences and the resulting product is distinctive and personal.
In his quieter moments, as in the theme from Angela’s Ashes or Schindler’s List, Williams can be lyrical and affecting.
But it’s the rousing music that evokes Imperial Stormtroopers, the swashbuckling Han Solo/Indiana Jones, galactic battles, ET and oversized sharks that excites the imagination. They are indelibly associated with images that come vividly to mind as soon as the few notes are heard. You can’t really ask for more from film music.
Under the direction of Nicholas Buc the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra threw themselves into this program with enthusiasm and elan.
It was also the last performance of ASO veteran Peter Whish-Wilson, principal tuba for nearly 45 years, a remarkable achievement – and a great concert to go out on.
– STEPHEN WHITTINGTON
Australian String Quartet
Elder Hall
February 1
In their first concert of 2022, the ASQ presented a modestly proportioned one-hour program with all the ease and familiarity you might expect after half-a-dozen performances.
They were absorbed straight away in the thick of things, extracting the nuance and brilliant glitter from Benjamin Britten’s Three Divertimenti, student works to be sure but written with astonishing facility.
Britten’s determined anti-romanticism and edgy harmonies coupled with transparent, sometimes sparsely written but always cogent harmonies, came through with some truly purposeful playing.
The ASQ managed to be sure footed yet whimsical simultaneously as they negotiated Britten’s brilliant and oh-so-clever musical canvasses.
Three miniatures by Australian composers followed, composed as encores for the ASQ in 2020.
Alice Chance’s slight but fun Nose-scrunch reel, Harry Sdraulig’s engaging somewhat minimalist Swirl and Holly Harrison’s masterfully energised bluegrass inspired Swoop all did more than merely entertain.
The program’s main offering was undoubtedly Tchaikovsky’s String quartet in D Op 11, almost as much a student work as the Britten and similarly precocious, full of youthful enterprise and incredibly adept.
It’s not an entirely easy work to project owing to Tchaikovsky’s penchant for high registers all around which can often sound simply shrill.
But ASQ have developed an innate sense of balance over the comparatively short time they have all played together and this performance, with its famously melodic Andante, was very satisfyingly poised between brilliance and richly mellow sonorities, a Tchaikovsky trademark throughout his career.
– RODNEY SMITH
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf
State Theatre Company South Australia
Dunstan Playhouse, January 28 to February 6
State Theatre’s much-hyped co-production with Sydney Festival of Edward Albee’s celebrated Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf is a curious thing.
An underachieving academic, George, and his domineering wife Martha, after a long night at a College function, invite a new high-flying scientist, Nick, and his ditzy wife Honey back for drinks in the wee small hours.
Fuelled by liquor, George and Martha spar viciously. Nick and Honey, though repelled, are drawn into the web. And the games begin.
Director Margaret Harvey sets out to explore the work in the light of society 60 years removed from the Swinging Sixties, and with a “colour-conscious” eye.
So she casts Wagadam man Jimi Bani as George, white Susan Prior as Martha, Congolese born Rashidi Edward as Nick and Asian-Australian Juanita Navas-Nguyen as Honey.
All are fine actors, Navas-Nguyen in particular a shooting star in the theatrical firmament.
It’s a bold move, indeed one that required the approval of the Albee estate, so strict are the controls on the play. That it got the go-ahead is well worth noting.
So does it succeed? In large measure, yes, because Albee’s text is, in truth, a classic. And the casting adds stunning impact to more than a few episodes, most vividly George and Martha’s cruel taunting of Nick as a houseboy or stud. The surreal second act is often ablaze with excitement.
Other themes fare less well. There is no crescendo in the tension as George ruminates on an imaginary child, while the sexual tension between Martha and Nick is only fleeting.
Honey’s cries of “Violence! Violence!” ought to be a harrowing refrain in a wild melee, but are more a distraction.
The set, another stunning effort by Ailsa Paterson, adds to the intrigue of the production, with its walls of words and minimalist decor. A sculpture of a tortured head as the centrepiece is a clever touch.
Nigel Levings’ lighting design ranges from the stark to the subtle, especially in the second act where Albee’s exploration of the relationship between illusion and reality reaches fever pitch.
Virginia Woolf is a long haul, three acts and more than three hours. Mostly, it’s well spent.
– PETER BURDON
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