Hans Zimmer soars to the heights of Superman, then slumbers

Hans Zimmer
Qudos Bank Arena, April 26
★★★½
Reviewed by GEORGE PALATHINGAL

An evening with German composer Hans Zimmer is, on paper, a thrilling prospect.

Hans Zimmer at the piano.Credit: Curdin Wullschleger

This is, after all, an artist who has stirred pretty much every emotion with his scores, whether the movie in question proves to be a classic (The Dark Knight, Gladiator, the new Dune films and more) or – let’s at least be more polite than Zimmer himself is when introducing his music from X-Men: Dark Phoenix – underwhelming.

Yet, this show, while sometimes dazzling, on the whole feels a little disappointing; a slightly wasted opportunity, even.

For one thing, there’s no actual movie footage to accompany the epic soundscapes Zimmer and his accomplished and musically diverse orchestra build. (Instead, we merely get varyingly evocative image loops, such as a golden wheat field for Gladiator and generic rolling seas for The Pirates of the Caribbean.)

Plus, a bunch of classical musicians wearing leather and trying to be rock stars is as cheesy as Zimmer’s frequent (albeit sincere) declarations of love both for most of them and this apparently extra-special Sydney audience.

The focus is on the performance and the music, and while the peaks are spectacular, the troughs can be snooze-inducing.

Man of Steel’s magnificent What Are You Going to Do When You Are Not Saving the World? soars like Superman, before a second suite from the film descends into guitar histrionics.

The percussive and propulsive Dark Knight, enhanced by careening lights and lasers, gets excitement levels up, only to be followed by the baffling inclusion of music from the forgettable, and perhaps forgotten, The Last Samurai.

The orchestra nonetheless does its best with everything, and its best is sensational. There are too many players to mention, but the lead cellist, violinist and double drummers especially excel.

They’re all notably women, which reflects well on Zimmer choosing the best people for the job.

The contrast of the absorbing Interstellar, with its austere, near-monochrome aesthetic (and bonus gymnastic performance), followed by the colour and vibrancy of The Lion King, works well to close the set, and Inception’s piano-led elegy Time is a gorgeous way to end an encore.

But there’s an aching sense that Zimmer and friends are capable of an even better, likely tighter show, and fawning standing ovations don’t get that message across.

Hans Zimmer plays a second and final Sydney show at Qudos Bank Arena on April 27.

MUSIC

Chaka Khan
Opera House, April 22
★★★

Reviewed by BERNARD ZUEL

Some 50 years since Yvette Stevens became Chaka Khan and then singer of Chicago funk band Rufus, she is neither shy (at her age, why should she be?) nor retiring (though at her age that might be expected).

Living legend Chaka Khan performs in Melbourne in 2023.Credit: Martin Philbey

Instead, she is a force of nature. A small force. Khan is tiny, seemingly built almost entirely from sequins, boots and hair. And voice. So much voice. On a tour marking this 50th anniversary, its range is wide, its power strong.

That’s handy because a room full of up-from-the-first-note, know-all-the-words, ready-to-dance fans figured they’d got it right just being here only to find they faced another visiting sound guy excited to be in the Opera House but getting the room wrong. Very wrong. How wrong?

The opening number, This Is My Night, buried lead, three backing vocals and guitar beneath drums and percussion that bludgeoned, and Khan was immediately asked to work hard. Really hard. Like rip that throat, pound that note, scrape those barnacles off hard.

I Feel For You hit the mark, with its percussion breakdown making the most of the sonic flaws, and the floating melody of a near-devotional I Remember U down-scaled the mountain she had to climb. Yet, the unbalanced racket elsewhere made that voice sound as if it were straining just to break through.

It felt as if Khan were fighting against, rather than playing with, the band during the looser, almost louche groove of Tell Me Something Good, or as if the scatting in I’m A Woman were a plea, not her running free.

In Whatcha Gonna Do, a mood more cruise than strut, the thudding drums dragged that easy rhythm down and squeezed that voice up through the gaps. Even I’m Every Woman, a song almost bulletproof in its ability to carry the room with pleasure and affirmation, only just overcame those sonic hurdles.

It’s tempting to think that maybe this explains why Khan ceded centre stage to those backing vocalists for much of Until You Come Back For Me, a mere four songs into the show, and later left the stage altogether for a three-song bracket as each vocalist took the lead.

Still, given the night closed with Ain’t Nobody, not the best song in her repertoire but a perfect mix of slink, simplicity, groove and glee to send ’em home happy, there’s a sound engineer who might think he just about got away with this.

MUSIC
TOTO WITH CHRISTOPHER CROSS
Darling Harbour Theatre, ICC, April 19
★★★
Reviewed by James Jennings

What to do when you’ve got, say, three songs that are bulletproof crowd-pleasers, yet you’ve been asked to perform a gig that lasts at least an hour or more?

Toto in Sydney: Original member Steve Lukather (on guitar) still leads the band. Credit:  Ashley Mar

If you’re Christopher Cross, a man who could justifiably be credited with creating the genre known as yacht rock (smooth, adult-contemporary music of the late ’70s and early ’80s) thanks to his 1980 hit singles Sailing and Ride Like the Wind, you strategically spread them out to one killer track every half hour. Arthur’s Theme (Best That You Can Do) completes Cross’s crowd-pleasing trifecta.

The rest of his set is wisely padded out with songs from his hit 1979 self-titled debut album, though a tune he refers to as a “deep cut” called Dreamers and a new song called You both sound good enough to prove he’s more than just a guy with a few 45-year-old hits.

American pop-rock band Toto have a few better-known songs to their name, but the rule of three bulletproof crowd-pleasers applies to them too. One of those, 1982’s Rosanna, is second cab off the rank and goes down as well as you’d expect, even if only one person on stage – guitarist and singer Steve Lukather – is an original Toto member.

The seven band members are all masterful musicians, particularly new keyboardist and singer Dennis Atlas, who plays his instrument as if he’s been teleported straight from the ’80s, even though he’s the youngest by far at 27.

Despite the skills on display, some sins are committed: several songs turn into extended jams (always more fun for players than audience; in that vein we also get solos on keyboard [two] and drum).

There are a few decent songs along the way, such as 99 and I’ll Supply the Love, but more that feel like a chore to get through. It all becomes a bit of an AM radio-friendly soup.

Then, finally, bulletproof, crowd-pleasing redemption: 1978 pop-rock classic Hold the Line livens things up considerably, the perfect entree for Toto’s defining song, 1982’s Africa, which seems to have only increased in popularity as the decades have rolled on thanks to numerous remixes, covers and pop culture references.

It’s a glorious note to go out on, and makes up for a gig that could have done with a few more songs of the same calibre.

MUSIC
SYDNEY PHILHARMONIA CHOIRS
Sydney Opera House Concert Hall, April 17
★★★½
Reviewed by Harriet Cunningham

Sydney Philharmonia Choirs’ Vox and Chamber ensembles have come together with the Australian Romantic and Classical Orchestra (ARCO) to present Bach’s St Matthew Passion in the 1841 arrangement of the work by Felix Mendelssohn.

St Matthew Passion: The choir responded to conductor Elizabeth Scott with impressive precision and energy.Credit: Keith Saunders

In the 300 or so years since Bach’s St Matthew Passion was first performed, it has undergone myriad transformations: there have been changes in instrumentation, pitch and structure, and it has been staged as an opera and a ballet.

Mendelssohn’s version, as recreated by ARCO’s team of specialists, is notable for its orchestration. In place of a largely improvised keyboard and viola da gamba continuo, we hear Mendelssohn’s written-out accompaniments for two cellos and bass. In place of the obsolete oboes da caccia, Mendelssohn writes for the new-fangled clarinet and basset horn.

At times, it feels like a revelation, a radically different palette of tone colours, bringing unfamiliar texture and suspense to the score. At others, it feels like an unfamiliar intrusion, especially when pitch goes awry between historic instruments and contemporary voices.

The period interpretation also features romantic styles of rubato, which sound mannered to this modern ear.

The Passion is a drama of many characters, some represented by singers, some by instruments. The choristers are particularly versatile, at one moment playing the mob, angry and ready to roar, and at another lulling us into contemplative wonder with a pianissimo chorale. It may be a small army of voices, but it responds to conductor Elizabeth Scott with impressive precision and energy.

Scott has also assembled an excellent line-up of soloists: Andrew O’Connor plays many roles with consummate skill, and Penelope Mills brings fine clarity to the soprano roles, while Emily Edmonds’ mezzo-soprano voice is full of warmth.

Concertmaster Rachael Beesley and flutist Melissa Farrow bring mellifluous virtuosity to their obligato accompaniments, while Teddy Tahu Rhodes shines as a charismatic and eloquent Christus. Finally, the hero of the evening is Andrew Goodwin as the Evangelist, his voice reaching into the heavens with sublime ease.

BLUES
Gary Clark Jr
Enmore Theatre, April 17
★★★½
Reviewed by Bernard Zuel

The clue was in his entrance. Long, extravagantly lean and topped by a high, wide and handsomely white hat, Texan Gary Clark jnr ambled on like he was just passing through.

He sang of suspicion and resistance: Gary Clark jnrCredit: Ashley Mar

It was like purpose was at his disposal – like time was flexible, elastic even, and to be shaped not so much by will as by example. And it was.

Even as the band began playing, a long, atmosphere-heavy introduction was measured in its tempo but deliberately vague in its intentions, all possibilities open. Then this moody, chugging blues emerged and Maktub took shape: decidedly North African in its desert airy expansiveness, it suggested both movement and stasis, with Clark’s slide guitar in long strides rather than stealthy steps.

He sang of suspicion and resistance in the tone of someone wearied by the fight but not bent by it; he warned “just tell ’em, we’re coming” but cautioned “we gotta move in the same direction”, with the patience of someone who has been this way before. And so it went, always undulating rather than surging, for almost 10 minutes, time immaterial.

It continued thus for the rest of the night: as the hour mark ticked over, Clark and band had only just started on their seventh song. There would be only four more, including an encore, in a show of almost two hours.

In that time-defying space, variety was not as pronounced as in his most recent albums, where Clark has expanded his remit well beyond Texas blues. Still, you could hear echoes of Parliament/Funkadelic in the loose, odd, rhythmically insistent Alone Together, while the hands of Curtis Mayfield and D’Angelo – old soul and nu-soul – could be felt in R&B-driven numbers like the righteously moved Feed the Babies, the first time Clark’s falsetto emerged.

One of those predecessors would probably have encouraged Clark to shorten the too-long preamble to the set’s closer, Habits, which seemed a culmination of the noodling that crept in during the final stages of the night and served to speed the exit of some in the audience.

But then, the man might have responded by pointing out how the Catherine wheel of a solo that climaxed aforementioned noodling and the night all but washed away such thoughts – as if they, like time, didn’t matter.

THEATRE
SNAKEFACE
Belvoir Street 25A, April 11
Reviewed by HARRIET CUNNINGHAM
★★★★★

Aliyah Knight, playwright and performer, is already on stage as the audience files into Belvoir Street’s downstairs theatre and is still there when the lights go up. It feels like there is nowhere else to go.

Just a scrim at the back (used to project text, sometimes readable, sometimes censored) and a block of stone – which turns out to be clay – centre stage. Music fills up the remaining space, enveloping and energising a young queer figure of colour as they spin, sway and groove.

A coming-of-age story, a myth, a fever dream and a mystery: Snakeface is written and performed by Aliyah Knight.Credit: Abraham de Souza, Fruit Box Theatre

Snakeface is many things: a coming-of-age story, a myth, a fever dream and a mystery. Its title references the murderous, snake-haired Medusa of Greek myth. Knight’s imagination transforms Medusa into a victim, made into a monster by sexual violence. This becomes a springboard into the mind and body of a woman whose transformation is anything but mythical.

There’s a gritty, joyful authenticity about much of Knight’s script, which captures the wide-eyed curiosity and liminal sensation of a life-hungry teenager. They watch two beads of sweat running down a naked man’s chest and wonder which wins the race; they catch eyes with a stranger in a bar and hallucinate with pleasure.

There’s poetry in the prose of the young woman’s words, and it clashes with the ugly words jumping out from the poetry projected on the backdrop. Knight delivers it all with fluency, flipping from chatter to chant in a sustained monologue, which I would be fascinated to read.

Words, however, are only one of the layers: Snakeface is a physical tour-de-force from the comfortable groove as we walk in, to the sticky, icky mess of intimacy. The clay bench quickly leaves its mark, at first just pale grey dust on dark skin, then, as Knight digs deeper, becoming dripping gobbets of who knows what, caking their skin, embodying the disgust and rejection of their white lovers.

Growing up black and queer is messy and violent and sexy and tragic. The way Snakeface tells it, it is also very funny, with good solid belly laughs to leaven a tough story. And while the ending is not exactly happy, it is joyous.

Knight has created a hugely impressive, hugely affecting piece of work in collaboration with Fruit Box Theatre’s brave team of creatives, which includes access and wellbeing consultants to manage the show’s confronting themes.

Belvoir Street Theatre’s 25A program starts from virtually nothing: a space, a shoe-string budget, a great idea. It throws independent theatre a lifeline by offering the downstairs theatre for no cost to a carefully curated line-up of emerging creative teams.

Snakeface is the first of seven new works this year. It’s going to be hard to beat.