The dancing may be a bit cringe, but Katy Perry can still put on an electric show

MUSIC
Katy Perry
Qudos Bank Arena, June 4
Reviewed by MILLIE MUROI
★★★★

Those hoping for depth, intimacy or soul-stirring vocals will leave Katy Perry’s show with an unscratched itch, but don’t be disheartened by the negative reviews that have followed her around on her Lifetimes Tour.

Katy Perry in concert at Qudos Bank Arena, Sydney Olympic Park on Wednesday.Credit: Wolter Peeters

A seasoned queen of camp, Perry has undeniable stage presence as she marches, trots and soars around the stage in a show that is spectacle on steroids. Despite declaring that her “brain thinks it’s in bed right now”, the American singer has an infectious energy that gets hearts racing.

The widespread criticisms of her “cringe” dancing are well-founded – but only if you focus too hard on her every move. The production, while heavy on prerecorded and animated content, is captivating and surprising, the costumes spectacular, and her back-up dancers versatile and agile, adopting a stunning range of roles, from robots to acrobats, in an action-packed simulation-style adventure.

The production relied heavily on prerecorded and animated content.Credit: Wolter Peeters

Perry’s vocals were, however, too often overpowered by the backing music, meaning her performance was more a feast for the eyes than the ears. But there were moments – such as during the acoustic set – where her voice shone with emotion, power, and unexpected runs that ebbed throughout much of the set list. Perry’s performances of I’m Still Breathing and Thinking of You from her first commercially successful album One of the Boys (2008) were especially memorable.

While Perry’s medley of hits including California Gurls and Last Friday Night from her disco-influenced album Teenage Dream (2010) were rapturously received by the crowd, they seemed a little rushed. Cutting back on the prerecorded sci-fi narrative and making more time for Perry to ride the wave of some of her most popular discography would have helped.

Despite the spectacle, Perry delivered her big hits with emotion and poignancy. Credit: Wolter Peeters

There were, however, nostalgic and fun renditions of Perry’s breakout song I Kissed a Girl (2008), hit anthem Roar (2013) from her Prism album, and power pop single Part of Me (2012) – punctuated by acrobatics and flights to the nosebleed sections of the crowd.

And while her newest album, 143, has been the subject of overwhelmingly negative reviews from critics, touching songs such as All the Love – penned about her daughter – are a reminder of the poignancy and passion Perry can deliver both in her songs and on stage.

Seven years since her last visit to Australia, Katy Perry has returned with gusto. In her own words, she is “a little rough around the edges” but she can still put on an electric show.

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The Fairy Queen
Pinchgut Opera
Roslyn Packer Theatre, June 7
Reviewed by PETER McCALLUM
★★★★½

British director Peter Brook claimed any empty space can be a stage. An actor walks across it while being watched and it becomes theatre. Taking Brook’s minimalist definition to heart, Pinchgut Opera has, since 2002, walked and sung across the empty space of the City Recital Hall’s cheekily adorned concert platform to the delight of thousands.

For Netia Jones’ poised and witty recreation of Purcell’s semi-opera The Fairy Queen, they have moved to the Roslyn Packer Theatre, affording themselves the previously unavailable theatrical luxuries of a proscenium arch, generous wing space, stage depth, plentiful stage furniture and a large screen for digital projection, not to mention multiple changes of Jones’ gorgeously coloured costumes.

Cathy-Di Zhang was bright-voiced with penetrating sound.Credit: Cassandra Hannagan

Yet this production preserves Pinchgut’s gently self-mocking irony over theatrical pretence, which here, as previously, serves always to turn attention back to the ravishing seduction of the voices and the glistening transparency of the Orchestra of the Antipodes, superbly balanced and timed by conductor Erin Helyard.

Acoustically designed for the spoken word, the Roslyn Packer Theatre has a shorter reverberation time than the City Recital Hall, which creates less afterglow for the voices and gives the instruments unadorned clarity. Yet there remains ample colour in the sound, and solos and ensembles retain crucial intimacy and immediacy.

Created in 1692, The Fairy Queen was an irreverent restoration adaptation of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream with songs, dance and instrumental music added to the spoken word in the English masque tradition. The irresistible charm of Purcell’s score lies particularly in his melodic genius and his quirky brilliance in matching words and rhythm, and his music contains almost nothing of Shakespeare.

Andrew O’Connor gate-crashed the airport scene with highly plausible drunken slurs.Credit: Cassandra Hannagan

Rather than try to recreate the plot and characters, Jones has invented a modern abstract scenario around Purcell’s five masques, following a 24-hour hour frame, culminating, as in Shakespeare, in a triple marriage.

Singers and dancers move against a wide screen of projected images – an airport, a park, a bar, a bus stop, late-night radio, a bedroom, a parade, and a wedding. The use of silhouette and carefully spaced stage placement creates a highly stylised reality allowing just enough theatrical context in which to wallow in the music.

Bass-baritone Andrew O’Connor gate-crashed the airport scene with highly plausible drunken slurs, subsequently hushing the audience with breathless poise and smoothly rounded stillness in the sleep scene, which Helyard sustained so as to make this moment the centre of the work.

Soprano Cathy-Di Zhang was bright-voiced with penetrating sound, even in moments of alcohol-fuelled languor. Eden Shifroni carried the ornate decorations of Ye Gentle Spirits of the Air as a frazzled radio producer with light fluid melodiousness, while, in the “on-air” studio, Anthony Mackey provided well-shaped firmness as foil to Kanen Breen’s comic turn No, no, no kissing at all!

Sopranos Olivia Payne, Shifroni and Morgan Balfour created golden-voiced blends in various configurations of as nymphs and lovers, and Sebastian Maclaine and Louis Hurley brought refined eloquence and exquisite balance to their duet as a pair of burly security guards. Balfour sustained comely melodic shape with refined evenness as wedding celebrant, and Breen displayed masterly edge as wedding speaker.

Keara Donohoe created a superbly nuanced expressive plaint among the frivolities of the final act. Anna Fraser maintained deft vocal colour and polish while appearing to drunkenly lurch around the vocal line. Nicholas Dinopoulos began his characterisation of Hymen as a shaggy morose groom opening out flamboyantly for the close.

The four dancers, Franky Drousioti, Dean Elliott, Hoyori Maruo and Kino McHugh, choreographed by Shannon Burns, articulated lithe agile lines in transition scenes. The Orchestra of the Antipodes, led by Matthew Greco, played Purcell’s melodies with spirited buoyancy with delicate accompaniment in solos from theorbo player Simon Martyn-Ellis and guitarist George Wills.

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VIVID LIVE
JAPANESE BREAKFAST
Concert hall, Sydney Opera House, June 3
Reviewed by MICHAEL RUFFLES
★★★

As five great philosophers of the late 20th century said, “Baby, when the lights go out, I’ll show you what it’s all about”.

As the kaleidoscopic lights of the Vivid Festival danced on the outside of the Opera House, inside US indie-pop band Japanese Breakfast was plunged into darkness.

The pink glow of relief as the lights come back up for Michelle Zauner of Japanese Breakfast during Vivid Live at the concert hall, Sydney Opera House.Credit: Mikki Gomez

About half an hour into their ethereal set, Michelle Zauner and co suffered a technical failure that turned the concert hall into a black hole.

Zauner had been singing about obsessing in the dark during the oddly uplifting ode to introspection, Slide Tackle, then got to put it into practice.

For two songs, they battled on, lit with little more than a remote-controlled lantern and the dapple of some distant house lights. The Woman that Loves You and Picture Window shone anyway, as delicately crafted pieces of pop that would have had the audience transfixed even if Zauner had been strumming by a campfire.

After a 20-minute intermission to reset the lights failed, the band reappeared and battled on. Drummer Craig Hendrix was enlisted for his Jeff Bridges impression on the duet Men in Bars, but relief washed over everyone when the pink hues of stage lights mingled with smoke during the glistening Kokomo, IN.

While it provided the most interesting moments, it would be unfair to call the blackout the show’s highlight. Zauner and the band did nothing wrong.

Their blissful, dreamy brand of pop was variously accented with woodwind, violins, saxophones and synthesisers, giving the guitar-led singer-songwriter tracks a warm, rounded quality that at times were a little too pretty for their own good.

The glitch distracted but did not detract from the quality of the music or the performance – and Zauner has a voice that clearly resonates with her fans – but the songs often wash over without sticking. Only during the encore did the joyous Be Sweet rouse the audience to their feet.

Zauner says she was jet-lagged, woke at 4.30am, had her dress on incorrectly for the early part of the set, forgot what an echidna was called, and prattled about lesbian geese.

“Everything’s going so well,” she joked at one point.

Chances are, she won’t forget this show in a hurry.

“That’s live music, baby.”

VIVID LIVE
BETH GIBBONS
Concert hall, Sydney Opera House, May 30
Reviewed by BERNARD ZUEL
★★★★

Here was a night which could be summarised with its beginning and its end, and yet to do so might also suggest something altogether different from what was experienced.

It began with Middle Eastern flavours, a drone and a hum and sinuous rhythms, and ended with a closed-eyed dance of limbs unfurled beneath rolling drums and chanting under-voices.

Beth Gibbons at the Sydney Opera House on May 30 for Vivid Live.Credit: Jordan Munns

Within that was the fluidity and coiled spring of an eight-piece band of much more than a dozen parts (Howard Jacobs alone played flute, bass saxophone, tuned percussion and drums; Emma Smith tripled on violin, guitar and vocals; everyone did something extra). Through that was a physical release, almost joyfully so, of some kind of shadow dancing.

A sometimes queasy romantic current pulsed within those songs, Tell Me Who You Are Today and Reaching Out, one also evident in the more controlled movement and clearer, if still pock-marked, faith of Lost Changes, a mid-show moment whose refrain of “Time changes, life changes/Is what changes things/We’re all lost together” dispelled and invited darkness at the same time.

And how could we not ride the groovy, baby, groovy splendour of Tom the Model, a song that evoked a never-happened-but-should have ’60s moment of Gene Pitney produced by Neil Diamond. All this was true.

Beth Gibbons was accompanied by an eight-piece band. Credit: Jordan Munns

And yet inside it all was the other story Beth Gibbons tells, of that darkness in shades of uncertainty, of a taut line holding rhythms close and emotions closer still, of drums as likely to be played with mallets as sticks, sonorous rather than sharp.

And most of all of the intensity that held, compelled through everything, broken only when at the end of each song Gibbons – whose voice is unchanged, and if anything even firmer – turned her back, retreated to the even darker space behind and broke from our gaze.

Within Mysteries’ pastoral awakening (acoustic guitar only at the beginning, choral voices almost humming, before a siren-like woman’s voice took us out) and the flute and comfort of Whispering Love’s off-kilter dreaminess (which chose not to envelope but instead drape itself over us) was a sense of what might be lost.

Through the haunted land of creeping mood and incipient discordance that is Burden Of Life (“But all the times I’ve lost my way, crept inside, tried not to sway like pebbles on the shore”) was the threat of what might be found.

And then there were those times when the unspoken did the work for us anyway, the encore’s double Portishead surge-and-hold of Roads and Glory Box which settled like smoke and insinuated themselves. The former was a chilled atmosphere that sought warmth; the latter, a sultriness that contained an edge. The keyboards of Roads closed in behind us after the bass had led us in; the guitar solo of Glory Box refracted light, giving us a brief glimpse of mayhem inches away.

The more I think about it, that beginning and end, the middle and the spaces around it, were telling one story. Only the angle from which you approached it changed perspective.

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