If you love cabaret as an art form, you must see this provocative show

CABARET
The Butcher, The Baker… ★★★
Theatre Works Explosives Factory, Until Feb 15

Ella Filar’s The Butcher, The Baker… concocts a wild and unsettling comic-erotic cabaret. It was inspired by Filar’s experience living in the 1970s women-only commune Amazon Acres, which sought to build a utopian community free of patriarchal structures – and unleashes onstage the untameable forces shaping gender, sexuality and desire.

Claire Nicholls and Natasha Broadstock in The Butcher, the Baker...Credit: Darren Gill

The show is bizarre, ghoulish, provocative: a gleeful upending of fantasies and received ideas about women – not to mention the politics of “good taste” – that bites and bewitches and doesn’t care too much if you think it’s the right kind of feminist or not.

It reminded me most strongly of the marvellous Angela Carter and her subversive reworkings of fairytales. Like Carter, Filar injects a cliched and oppressive narrative form – one that doesn’t really pass the Bechdel test – with dark urges, satirical and mock-heroic elements, gruesome gothic twists, and an unfettered and voracious feminine sexual drive.

Opening the show are a pair of bakers (Myf Powell, Bruce Langdon) who emerge, chorus-like, through a suggestively parted scrim. They sing and shriek the jagged expressionism of the piece to life throughout.

The story follows artist Honey Valik (Natasha Broadstock), who’s dating an emotionally distant brain surgeon, Alex (Claire Nicholls). It’s a difficult relationship: Honey’s sick of trying to penetrate his mysteries, frustrated by the lack of sex, and tired too of doing all the cooking.

Bakers Bruce Langdon and Myf Powell.

When she falls in lust with the local butcher (Fletcher Dyson), someone’s up for the chop. There are meathooks suspended above the stage, after all, and the erotic games promise to end in blood, grinding gender expression and politics and queer sexuality into a fine mince, before leading us to a climactic slaughter.

The performances are committed, though it’s a challenging task to mix low-key Australian humour with the kind of hard-edged artifice of European avant-garde theatre. Sometimes the acting seethes with hilarity and menace; sometimes it falls flat. Perhaps the direction needs to be entrusted to an outside eye. On the other hand, Filar’s moody and inventive music and songs will astonish even those familiar with her work.

Played by a live band (saxophone, violin, keyboard and percussion), the original composition makes it feel like you’ve stepped into some alternative dimension of Eastern European cabaret. Nobody else in Melbourne writes music quite like this, as far as I know. If you love cabaret as an art form, you should see The Butcher, The Baker… and be inspired by how rebellious and free-souled it sounds.
Reviewed by Cameron Woodhead

Norwegian pop singer Aurora at Rod Laver Arena.Credit: Rick Clifford

MUSIC
Aurora ★★★
Margaret Court Arena, February 11

Aurora hails from the northern forests of Norway, and walks on stage with all the icy ethereality you’d expect: pale, blond, wearing something billowy, and accompanied by cool synthesisers, like a sprite in a Scandi folk-horror film.

But she’s also a goofy, eccentric purveyor of warm platitudes and awkward jokes. “Love is a privilege that doesn’t always come for free,” she says over an acoustic guitar intro. “I ate so much cake and nearly shat myself,” she says of her show nerves. She’s herself, and her voice is warm, cursive and slick.

The audience are braced for anthems, and anthems they get – but, for me at least, the storm never quite breaks. The moments are there, but they’re too contrived, too trite. The imagery may be organic (“The sea waves are my evening gown / And the sun on my head is my crown” she sings on Queendom; “It seems like we are forgetting more and more about nature’s worth”, she says in a short lecture tucked into The Seed); but she never draws the blood these sentiments promise. There’s a dash of Kate Bush here, a bit of Fever Ray there, but with the edges sanded off.

Aurora amped up the anthems.Credit: Rick Clifford

I think I’m on my own, though. An intimate moment becomes a floodlit one when a sea of phone torches turn the arena an electric white in Exist for Love. The audience finds the quiet moments to scream “I love you!” She stumbles and laughs into a couple of songs endearingly. Someone asks her to have their babies. She agrees. “I’ve been trying to make a baby with myself for years,” she says. “It doesn’t work. Feels nice though!”

The momentum dips in a lengthy speech as we come towards the end of the night. “There’s nothing better than being there for someone we love,” she says. “It’s important to give yourself time.” I’m not entirely sure what she’s talking about now, but it’s reassuring to hear all the same.

When she does get into the closing numbers the pace picks up. Some Kind of Skin is as big as it gets, and on Invisible Wounds (“I look for blood to shed / Mistaking every vein for thread”), in which she accompanies herself on keys, she’s joined by a chorus of screeching seagulls circling the open arena roof. It’s an odd moment of inimitable beauty. This is what I’ve been waiting for: Aurora in concert with the unpredictability of nature at last.

Reviewed by Will Cox

MUSICAL
Cricket The Musical ★★★
Denis Carnahan, Memo Music Hall, February 8

Devotees of sport and the performing arts might have tribal wariness of each other – think of the jocks and drama nerds in almost every teen movie ever made – but in truth they’re natural bedfellows.

Denis Carnahan wrote and stars in Cricket The Musical.

Can you really imagine a world of sport without half-time entertainment? Or comic roastings? Or variety segments? And how diminished our stages would be if we didn’t have Nathan Maynard’s brilliant play about racism in footy, 37, currently showing at the MTC, or Eddie Perfect’s homegrown hit, Shane Warne the Musical.

Denis Carnahan’s Cricket the Musical isn’t in fact a musical, as Shane Warne was, though I’d wager that Carnahan’s more of a cricket tragic than Perfect. His sportive musical satire gifts audiences with cricketing erudition, wrapped in the comforts of Australian kitsch and nostalgia. It comes across as the kind of affectionate, knockabout fun – up there with Greg Champion and The Coodabeen Champions – you don’t see much any more.

No wicket’s too sticky for Carnahan, and he gets an edge on every triumph and scandal in the game.

Comic songs range from a thigh-slapping ode (sung to the tune of I’ve Been Everywhere) to the glories of the moustache throughout cricket history, through to the odious Tim Paine dick-pics episode – a small (though hardly trivial) matter, perhaps most effectively skewered by women to this point.

Legendary incidents of unsportsmanlike conduct include the notorious “underarm bowling incident” of 1981 and various match-fixing scandals, and that oft-invoked ideal, The Spirit of Cricket, even comes to the crease as nightwatchman.

Higher in the batting order are good-natured musical roastings of the storied Steve Smith and valiant Ricky Ponting; a brief history of the Ashes calculated to deflate a British sense of disdain for the colonies; and a nostalgic look at Aussie sports broadcasting, notably a humorous eulogy for the cricket coverage that the owner of this masthead, Channel Nine, served Australians for 40 years.

Carnahan has an impressive vocal range. Playful rewrites of pop and rock and country favourites are the main attraction with a few original numbers on guitar. Clever video montages, historical footage of cricketing bloopers and other amusing items of Australiana supplement Carnahan’s live comic antics.

It’s all performed with reverent irreverence, a fine sense of the ridiculous, and builds an easy rapport with the audience. I suspect it’d go down as well in a country pub as at corporate functions, or indeed the Melbourne International Comedy Festival once the current tour ends.
Reviewed by Cameron Woodhead

MUSIC
ACO: BRAHMS & BEETHOVEN ★★★★★
Melbourne Recital Centre, February 8

Fifty years of fine music making is indeed worth celebrating and the Australian Chamber Orchestra threw an excellent party to open its golden anniversary season. Not content to fete its many achievements and confirm its well-respected global status, this program looked to the future by expanding the chamber dimensions of the orchestra to involve current and former members of the ACO Emerging Artist Program.

Works were chosen to match the enlarged band. Artistic director and lead violin Richard Tognetti was the soloist in Brahms’ epic Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 77 after which came Beethoven’s evergreen Symphony No. 7 in A major, Op. 92.

ACO artistic director Richard Tognetti has led the chamber orchestra since 1990.Credit: ACO

Tognetti’s deep emotional commitment to the Brahms ensured a heart-stirring account. Quickly whipping up a dramatic maelstrom in the opening movement, he ensured the orchestra relished its biting rhythms but also carefully shaped its contrasting lyrical elements. Tognetti’s dazzling cadenza, a “synthesis” of three others, incorporated a theatrical timpani roll (courtesy of the Italian composer Ferruccio Busoni) and plenty of technical fireworks.

Featuring the sensitive work of principal oboe Tatjana Zimre, the central Adagio unfolded with tenderness and serenity before ceding to the earthy exuberance of the final “gypsy” dance.

From the grandeur of its opening hammer strokes, the Beethoven gave out a bracing sense of exhilaration, also evident in the nimble third-movement scherzo and in the cavalry charge of the finale. At times in the famous second movement, with its soaring string melodies, the dynamics were reduced to a whisper, fortunately audible in the refined acoustics of Elisabeth Murdoch Hall.

As usual, Tognetti’s enthusiasm could not allow him to stand still on the platform. Clearly out to have fun, he and the players radiated a sense of joyous collaboration, the true hallmark of any chamber orchestra. May such joy illuminate the ACO’s next 50 years.
Reviewed by Tony Way

MUSIC
Bryan Adams ★★★★
Rod Laver Arena, February 6

A giant silver inflatable fist rises from the stage and floats over the crowd – a spectacle to promote Bryan Adams’ new single Roll With The Punches. A voiceover recites the spoken word introduction featured in Kick Ass, with its prophecy about an angel who will revive rock music. “Let there be guitar” yells Adams as he explodes onto the stage with the band.

The 65-year-old Canadian’s recognisable hits have graced pubs, karaoke bars, weddings, and the airwaves for decades. Selling over 65 million records worldwide, he’s been nominated for 16 Grammy Awards, three Academy Awards and five Golden Globe Awards. He’s currently performing across Australia and New Zealand for his So Happy It Hurts tour, adding another Melbourne show this month due to demand.

Bryan Adams at Rod Laver Arena on Thursday.Credit: Rick Clifford

The air is steeped in nostalgia as we’re transported to a different era where rock music reigned supreme. Adams’ accompanying band on keys, guitar and drums complement his powerful vocals, amplifying the emotion in each song. He performs renowned singles from his 1984 album Reckless, including Heaven, Run To You and the much-anticipated Summer of ’69, and romances the stadium with ballads, including Grammy-winning track (Everything I Do) I Do It For You and Please Forgive Me.

Adams owns the stage with a solo acoustic rendition of When You’re Gone, a hit that featured Melanie C from the Spice Girls, and the crowd claps along. He dedicates It’s Only Love, a duet with Tina Turner, to the late singer, interweaving a few bars of her well-known songs Simply the Best and What’s Love Got to Do with It into the performance.

The sold-out crowd sings along as Adams occasionally pauses his vocals, allowing them to fill in the lyrics.

Lead guitarist Keith Scott, who has performed with Adams since 1976, delivers electrifying solos. Later, he mellows out with a Spanish guitar for Have You Ever Really Loved a Woman. When he and Adams perform side-by-side, their chemistry is palpable.

Before You Belong To Me, Adams asks the crowd to pull out their best dance moves, adding “when we find you, we’re going to put you up on the big screen and embarrass you in front of all your friends”. Some enthusiasts go the extra mile and remove their tops to catch the singer’s attention.

For the final tracks, he performs on a small stage at the back of the stadium. He connects with fans in the stands with an acoustic rendition of All For Love, a collaborative track created with Sting and Rod Stewart from the film The Three Musketeers.

As he leaps and belts out tunes with his signature raspy growl, Adams shows no signs of slowing down. These are the best days of his life, in the summer of ’25.
Reviewed by Vyshnavee Wijekumar

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