Dark Noon rips apart the American Dream with savage intensity

THEATRE
DARK NOON
Sydney Town Hall, January 9
Until January 23
Reviewed by JOHN SHAND
★★★½

Dark Noon unravels the American Dream thread by thread, until all that’s left is a grinning nightmare. Winning the West is stripped down to a tawdry tale of guns, gold, whores, booze, genocide, railroads and God. Intermingled with a tale of whites behaving badly in carving up North America are references to their behaviour in colonising and oppressing South Africans.

Some will purse their lips and mutter about black armband views of history. But Dark Noon is merely ripping the romance out of white heroes with guns, emphasised by being performed by South Africans, most of whom are black, provocatively donning absurd blond wigs and crudely powdering their faces.

The screen gradually becomes our primary focus as a town is built.Credit:

Collectively devised, and then written by the Danish director Tue Biering, and choreographed and co-directed by Nhlanhla Mahlangu, it begins with a bare stage and big screen. Much of the action is shot live, cine-theatre-style, and the screen gradually becomes our primary focus as a town is built, wall-frame by wall-frame, obscuring parts of the stage. Saloon, brothel, church, diner, shop, bank, jail and reservation all spring up, a railroad slicing through their midst. Tropes of cowboy films are satirised; parallels with life in Johannesburg’s Apartheid townships emphasised.

Dark Noon is hardly the first attempt at de-mythologising the West. The most notable US success was the exceptionally gritty and poetic TV series, Deadwood. But Dark Noon has a different purpose. It uses the West as a metaphor for investigating wider matters of land theft and the very nature of story-telling. Every tale is told from a perspective, of course, and Dark Noon spins that perspective around, and tells a very white story through black eyes, with images, tableaux and song as vital as the words, which mostly come in the form of narration rather than dialogue.

“It was a time when white lives didn’t matter,” we’re told at the outset, before it goes on to prove it really was a time when no lives mattered. In the incessantly violent westward migration lay the roots of obsessions with guns, heroes, land, race, the ruthless garnering of wealth and the nation’s narcissistic sense of its own greatness. The show unfolds in titled chapters, and the fourth, Gold, Gold, Gold, is as manic a piece of theatre as you’ll see.

Yet, for all the unbounded energy of the show’s eight performers, all playing multiple roles (with some help from audience members), and the profundity of what it’s trying to say, Dark Noon can also lose dramaturgical clarity, and thereby momentum.

Utterly compelling to begin, the spell is lost intermittently, to come back with savage intensity at the end, when the actors tell of their own relationships with westerns while growing up. The importance of perspective is encapsulated when one says, “If you want to kill an African story, tell it in English.” In those terms, the western probably just got the treatment it deserved.

---

OPERA
Siegfried & Roy: The Unauthorised Opera
Wharf 1 Theatre, January 10
Until January 25
Reviewed by CHANTAL NGUYEN
★★★★

Walk into Siegfried & Roy: The Unauthorised Opera and the first thing you see – once your eyes adjust to the cabaret lighting – is that the Wharf 1 Theatre suddenly has a catwalk stage and bar, selling real drinks. The Sydney Festival crowd was out in full, many bedecked in sequins to celebrate opening night, sashaying between the bar and cabaret tables, drinks glinting in the overhead chandelier and disco ball light.

It’s an atmospheric start to Siegfried & Roy, a camp, absurdist, tragicomic opera by Luke Di Somma and Constantine Costi. Describing itself as “a tale of fame, fortune, and danger”, it’s about real-life German-American entertainers Siegfried Fischbacher and Roy Horn, famous in the ’80s and ’90s for their larger-than-life Vegas casino shows of magic tricks, lions and tigers, and even more ferocious costuming.

The cast of Siegfried & Roy is a lineup of outstanding Australian talent.Credit:

Here, the big cats are embodied by Mantacore, a tiger puppet (Thomas Remaili and Kirby Myers) who later morphs into a three-metre-high, vengeful incarnation of Roy’s conscience (Russell Harcourt’s excellent countertenor), before mauling Roy on his 59th birthday. “Happy birthday, Roy,” Harcourt purrs.

The cast is a line-up of outstanding Australian talent, who rise magnificently to the production’s demands that they become triple threats: singing, dancing, acting and even performing magic tricks.

Much-loved tenor Kanen Breen stars as flippant, tiger-loving Roy, contrasting with charismatic baritone Christopher Tonkin’s graver, workaholic Siegfried. Louis Hurley scene-steals as Roy’s ambitious toyboy Tyler. Cathy-Di Zhang swans in on her trademark glamour as magician’s assistant Nancy, and Simon Lobelson and Danielle Bavli strut the stage as splashy casino couple Randy and Tabby.

They’re dressed in an endless, glittering delight of clothes – the spangles! the hair! – by Tim Chappel, best known for The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.

Costi and Di Somma’s opera brims with eclectic nods to Wagner, Broadway, German operetta and the film-style music of Siegfried and Roy’s Vegas extravaganzas. It works best in the first half when it’s a tightly paced firecracker of comic absurdist gold, winkingly refusing to take itself too seriously. But the pacing, narrative sensibility and musical interest splutter towards Act 3 and are not quite cohesive enough to support the emotional depth the finale attempts to capture.

But in a genre famous for stuffy, one-dimensional “park and bark” singing, Siegfried & Roy is a remarkable breath of fresh air and a much-needed showcase for Australian talent. It’s the kind of ambitious, entertaining production the Australian arts scene should foster.

---

THEATRE
MULTIPLE BAD THINGS
Opera House Drama Theatre, January 8
Until January 12
Reviewed by JOYCE MORGAN
★★★½

It begins with a trigger warning. But just as you expect a brief, predictable list of theatrical content liable to offend, actor Simon Laherty delivers an extensive laundry list. There’s something for everyone – aside from strobe lighting and herbal cigarettes.

And by the time he soberly warns of “hand gestures” and “references to bad events”, there is much mirth in the room, and it’s apparent expectations have been punctured.

Scott Price takes it easy in his inflatable flamingo.

For almost four decades, Back to Back Theatre has been doing just that. It’s made them one of our most lauded theatre companies internationally. To the Ibsen Award in Oslo in 2022 – the so-called Nobel Prize for theatre – it added the Golden Lion Award for Lifetime
Achievement in Theatre in Venice last year.

So, the latest work from the Geelong-based company of neurodiverse and disabled
performers arrives in Sydney with great expectations.
This time, their focus is on workplace culture and power dynamics.

The striking, abstract set is dominated by an egg-shaped video screen of storm clouds.
Beneath this, the stage is filled with skeletal metal poles, the armature of a building. Some
assembly is required.

Three performers arrive, apparently to do just that. Although one of them flops himself into a
huge inflatable pink flamingo from where he lives his best life while the two female
colleagues do all the work.
Sarah Mainwaring is a vulnerable, gentle presence, Bron Batten a confident, energetic
figure. And it’s the dynamic between the two women that, after a slow start, ignites the piece.

Batten soon manipulates Mainwaring, patronising her co-worker with HR gobbledegook of
the “help me to help you” kind, even as she ignores Mainwaring’s pleas for assistance.
Batten spouts the language of inclusion and diversity, even as she weaponises it. Yet when
she turns her attention to a slothful Scott Price and deflates his flamingo, it’s hard not to
approve.

At the side of the stage, Laherty blends middle-management wastrel with sage. He reminds
us pain and death are real, and theatre isn’t. But mostly he plays solitaire or
doomscrolls though soft porn and animal videos.
In this Kafkaesque world, little wonder Mainwaring eventually calls a helpline.

The pre-recorded message – which shifts from treacly platitude to profane abuse – is a comic
highlight in a piece in which the dominant tone is ominous. The latter is aided by Zoë Barry’s sound design, which includes pulsing, metal clanging and
an occasional, annoying tinkly ringtone. Those sounds, according to a program note, were
“assembled from field recordings of bad things”.

The work itself is an assemblage of disparate components of meta theatre, existential angst
and workplace politics. Yet, the whole does not feel greater than the multiple parts.
The one-hour, group-devised show is concisely directed by Tamara Searle and Ingrid
Voorendt.

The four actors, who each create clear but nameless characters, are compelling to
watch.
Anna Cordingley’s fine set is central to a coup de théâtre towards the end which brings
tentative hope to a work that takes a dark view of human relationships.

---

DANCE
AFTERWORLD
The Neilson Nutshell, January 7
Until January 11
Reviewed by CHANTAL NGUYEN
★★★

The main drawcard of Afterworld is that it is the final posthumous performance of Eileen Kramer, the remarkable Bodenwieser Ballet dancer who died last year aged 110 after a long life in witness to 20th century modern dance.

Choreographed by Sue Healey to Laurence Pike’s percussive score, Afterworld is inspired by the Grecian myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, and imagines itself as a requiem exploring the rituals of life and death. References to the myth are overwhelmingly impressionistic rather than story-like.

Kramer had hoped to perform live as Eurydice, but following her death she appears as an enigmatic figure in film projection, gazing at the audience through tree branches, veils, and sunbeams. Her fingers gracefully flutter around her wizened face and deep liquid eyes, luminous with an expression borne from decades of artistry.

The late Eileen Kramer is an enigmatic figure in the performance.Credit: Sue Healey

Afterworld’s costumes and sets are appropriately requiem-themed: all shroud-like robes and diaphanous screens fluttering and sliding across the stage. There are five dancers (Nadiyah Akbar, Josh Freedman, Benjamin Hancock, Taiga Kita-Leong and Siobhan Lynch), who are artistically committed and technically outstanding, embodying Healey’s choreography with sinewy clarity. They move with the discipline and unity one would usually expect from an established company. In particular Kita-Leong, in a warlike solo danced with two wooden stakes, is a revelation of power and clean-lined athleticism.

Pike’s music is also strong, a buffet of driving rhythms set against ambient soundscapes. An excellent musician, Pike performs live, his drum kit set up stage left on a little platform edged with lights.

Despite all these strengths, Afterworld’s choreography often feels insipid and thinly paced, especially in the ensemble work. Some scenes exhibit wonderful conceptual strength: Kita-Leong’s solo; another solo where the excellent Freedman dances with two cymbals; and a trio where Freedman, Hancock, and Lynch morph into Cerberus, the three-headed dog who guards the underworld.

But otherwise the various parts of Afterworld do not quite coalesce, and the movement vocabulary lacks the definition and uniqueness necessary to give a dance thematic lucidity. Since Afterworld already takes a highly impressionistic approach to its foundational concepts, the overall effect was one of conceptual haziness.

---

THEATRE
CONVERTED!
Australian Theatre for Young People
Rebel Theatre, January 8
Reviewed by CASSIE TONGUE
★★★½

It’s 2025, and conversion therapy – the controversial, pseudo-scientific process of attempting to change someone’s sexual orientation or attractions – is still legal in certain parts of Australia. It was banned in New South Wales only last year.

Converted!, a new musical with book, music and lyrics by Vic Zerbst (The Feed) and co-composer Oliver John Cameron, is a joyful coming-of-age musical set at a conversion camp that gives us a chance to celebrate liberation from the therapy’s harmful ideas as the attendees at Camp Fix Yourself soon realise they don’t need any fixing.

Converted! features genuinely funny punchlines and strong performances.Credit: Daniel Boud

Maya (Megan Robinson) is recruited to the camp by Glenda (Cassie Hamilton), the school counsellor she idolises, and is determined to please her. But when she meets Bone (Teo Vergara), a rebellious heartthrob with a heart of gold, sparks fly.

The camp, led by Mr and Mrs Doctor (Nat Jobe and Helen Dallimore, both delightfully feasting on the scenery), is a tie-dyed, misguided mess of misappropriated therapy-speak, and it keeps its teen attendees in line with the threat of a ritualised, shame-filled reckoning with a “mirror of truth”.

But these kids won’t have their light dimmed by the camp that easily. Maya and Bone are drawn to each other, even as Maya and fellow camper Horace (Teo Persechino) are nudged towards a more heteronormative coupling. There’s also Sammy (Melody Kiptoo), who doesn’t know where to point her “compass of attraction, and Denver (Redd Scott), who, as a nonbinary camper, doesn’t neatly align with the aggressively gendered roles of the camp. Kyle (Ashley Garner) is less of a problem for the Doctors: his parents thought they were dropping him off at basketball camp.

When the campers band together and find their joy amidst the brainwashing, it’s a delight. Zerbst’s musical is charmingly old-school in structure, with songs that favour character and plot over overworked metaphor – Zerbst’s trademark killer comic timing crackles in the book scenes and in small musical moments – though Hayden Tonazzi’s largely playful direction doesn’t always move harmoniously with the pop-focused score, leaving awkward transitions between songs and scenes; the production feels a little unresolved.

Like most new Australian musicals, Converted! is still under-done in its debut and could do with another round of edits: main character Maya is more idea than person, a blank slate of narrative world-building and ideology, and the central love story between Maya and Bone is too shorthanded for its happy-ending payoff to feel earned. The music is competent and clear but almost tentative in sound, flattening out the edge of rock and the giddy, uplifting heartbeat of disco to chug dutifully along.

Its plot points don’t all neatly converge, and a few ideas or plot threads hang half-heartedly alongside the main narrative. But this is all fixable, and already there’s much to love here: genuinely funny punchlines, strong performances, and an effective act-two reprise that reaches past all the comedy to land in the heart. It’s already a good time: with a little more time and care, it will soar.

---

MUSIC
RUFUS WAINWRIGHT
Opera House Concert Hall, January 8
Reviewed by JAMES JENNINGS
★★★★
Whether playing a stripped-back set is a reflection of the current economic reality of touring with a full band or simply an artistic choice for a musician to present their work in a more intimate fashion, it seems to be happening a lot lately, with Nick Cave and Thom Yorke’s pared-back Sydney shows last year two recent examples.

Canadian-American singer-songwriter Rufus Wainwright is the latest visitor adding to this trend, and, with 11 albums under his belt, there’s plenty of back catalogue to be given the bare-bones, piano-and-acoustic-guitar treatment.

Wainwright’s powerful vibrato alone is enough to fill the Concert Hall and captivate the audience, which he ably does on show highlight Go or Go Ahead, a song about addiction that’s sung so beautifully you can feel the crowd collectively hold its breath.

Extremely personal subject matter is something Wainwright doesn’t shy away from, with two songs dedicated to his folk-singer parents, the late Kate McGarrigle (the tender Beauty Mark) and Loudon Wainwright III (Dinner at Eight, which Wainwright tells us was written directly after a storming argument with his father).

If that all sounds a bit dour, Wainwright is anything but, earning laughter throughout the show with his stage banter, and sometimes within the songs themselves. One of the biggest laughs of the night comes during “a new song called Old Song”, in which Wainwright sardonically sings “can’t we go back to the fall/when everyone was miserable across the board”.

There’s a welcome surprise when Wainwright introduces Melbourne’s Folk Bitch Trio to the stage, this night’s opening act whose stunning harmonies earned them headliner-worthy applause. Wainwright met the group at a recent Perth show and invited them along for the rest of the tour to accompany him on songs from 2023 album Folkocracy. It’s a wise decision: the team-up is so effective on gorgeous covers of Moondog’s High on a Rocky Ledge and Neil Young’s Harvest that you can only hope this leads to further collaboration.

Wainwright is back in solo piano mode for covers of Cora Vaucaire’s La Complainte de la Butte (from Moulin Rouge) and Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah. The latter may be the most over-covered song of all time, but Wainwright has the heart and hopeless romantic vibes to do it justice, making you pleased he chose to go it alone on this night, whatever the reason may be.