This feel-good show is the perfect gift for the littlies

Elf the Musical
Concert Hall, Sydney Opera House
December 20
Until December 29
Reviewed by CASSIE TONGUE
★★★
Twenty years since the debut of the movie Elf, starring Will Ferrell as Buddy, the human raised on the North Pole, it has become a contemporary holiday classic.

It also has a new life as a musical, which opened on Broadway in 2010 but is making its Australian debut in a concert presentation at the Sydney Opera House.

Elf The Musical is wide-eyed and sweet festive fun.Credit: Daniel Boud

It follows the narrative of the film: Buddy (Gareth Isaac) leaves Santa’s workshop, meets his all-too-human family, and falls for a disaffected department store elf (Brianna Bishop). Together, they might all bring the spirit of Christmas back to New York City.

It’s all very wide-eyed and sweet onstage, the film’s jokes broadened out and tamed to make sure it’s all good clean fun (the most dated lines and plot points have been thankfully excised). The songs, by Chad Beguelin and Matthew Sklar, aren’t anything to write home about, but at least they’re bright and breezy.

Director Eric Giancola keeps things simple in this bare-bones production that relies on LED screens and cheery animated backdrops to summon time and place (the video design is by David Bergman). It’s a wide-eyed approach, made with the little ones in mind, and works best if you just surrender to it.

The performers work overtime to bring the heart, and on that, they deliver. Isaac is a great fit for Buddy: a talented physical comedian who can smile for hours and make you believe he means it. Simon Burke lends a little playfulness to Buddy’s gruff, seemingly cold father - you can never quite dislike him.

LED screens and cheery animated backdrops summon time and place.Credit: Daniel Boud

Santa scores the most laughs from children and adults alike with his wry and approachable humour, and he’s played with just the right amount of silliness to cut through all the sweet by Lara Mulcahy.

Is it one of the great new musicals? No, but it does make space for magic: before the show started, a little girl who was seated next to me proudly informed me that this was her very first time ever going to the theatre.

Elf, with its bright simplicity and broad, easy warmth, is so welcoming to its younger audiences that you hear them giggle, react, and shift forward in their seats all over the Concert Hall. In that room, children like her were falling in love with a new kind of art and culture for the first time. That’s some Christmas present!

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THEATRE
MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING
Bella Vista Farm, December 21
Reviewed by JOHN SHAND
★★★½

Megan O’Connell’s Beatrice starts to win us from the moment she appears, when director Samantha Young has her kill a snake with a spade (the Sport for Jove production being set in 1890s Australia, cued by the gracious farmhouse adjoining the outdoor stage). O’Connell proceeds to fill almost to the brim one of Shakespeare’s great characters, and without a winning Beatrice, Much Ado About Nothing is as hollow as its title.

The second ingredient the play demands is a fizzing chemistry between Beatrice and Benedick, and Jay James-Moody provides his share, while making Benedick more eccentric than usual. This chemistry does not imply an even match, however. Among most of Shakespeare’s lovers – Juliet and Romeo, Cleopatra and Antony, Lady Macbeth and Macbeth – the female is the sharper knife, and Beatrice is no exception: Benedick is essentially her toy.

The bar for this chemistry is set precipitously high, having seen Anna Volska and Peter Carroll’s unforgettable vibrancy in Nimrod Theatre’s 1975 production at what is now Belvoir (far ahead of Kenneth Branagh and even Emma Thompson in Branagh’s film). With the play being Beatrice’s to win or lose, O’Connell’s challenge is that her wit must be brisk, and yet if it races ahead of our ears, we lose both the sense and the comedy. Happily, her instincts for pacing are sound, and so we delight in her for the laughs she provides, for her vivacity and for being the completest soul on stage.

If we don’t enjoy Beatrice and Benedick’s bantering antithesis of wooing, we’re left with subplots as flimsy as tissue paper, given the anodyne characters of Hero and Claudio in the second-layer love interest. Ellen Coote and Toby Blome strive to make more of them than Shakespeare wrote, and acquit themselves well enough so we almost care about their fates.

The strongest performance besides O’Connell’s is Mandela Mathia’s as Don Pedro and the Friar. Mathia has the presence of a ruler, the instincts of a comedian and a sonorous voice to outstrip the rest in dealing with the vagaries of outdoor theatre.

James-Moody’s quirky Benedick is matched by an even quirkier Don John, Don Pedro’s evil brother, played, in one of several examples of cross-gender casting, by Ziggy Resnick as more of a pantomime villain that usual, which largely works because John’s motivations for his skulduggery always seemed rather specious, anyway.

Hero’s father, Leonato, now her mother, is played by Leilani Loau, who also doubles Dogberry, the idiotic copper who stumbles upon John’s plot, and miraculously saves the day. Loau needs to act less on the surface and more from within to climb closer to the level of O’Connell and Mathia.

Ultimately, Much Ado, as beloved as it is in the canon, cannot approach the stature of Twelfth Night or As You Like It among the Shakespeare comedies without a truly dazzling pair of leads. Yet, it, too, has a darker side, like a village, that even on the sunniest of days, feels the shadow of the gallows on the hill above.

Young chooses to expunge much of the darkness, compounding the comedy (sometimes at the expense of the wit) by making it as broad as possible, with her farce-like staging and with the doubling of roles. Mathia, for instance, must swap from the Friar to Don Pedro before our eyes, when the latter is called in the wedding scene. But her emphasis on frivolity is generally to amusing effect.

Bella Vista Farm: until December 29; Leura Everglades: January 4-19.

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MUSIC
Royel Otis
Hordern Pavilion, December 21
Reviewed by PENRY BUCKLEY
★★★½

“It’s good to be home,” says Otis Pavlovic, one half of Royel Otis. “Now let’s go to Kokomo,” he continues before the band launches into Going Kokomo, with its refrain “our life’s a beach, so let’s let go”.

The duo is back in Sydney after a momentous world tour, and there’s an undeniable holiday vibe, from the summer breeze floating through the Hordern, to the audience’s sunnies and cargo shorts, and Chippy the Prawn, the giant, plastic crustacean adorning the stage backdrop.

Back-to-back Royel Otis world tours this year followed the breakout success of two cover versions – Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s Murder on the Dancefloor, recorded for Triple J’s Like a Version, and the Cranberries’ Linger. They were also nominated for eight ARIAs, winning four, including best group and best rock album, for debut release Pratts & Pain.

Royel Maddell and Otis Pavlovic perform in Italy as part of this year’s world tour.Credit: Corbis via Getty Images

The response to the two cover versions is huge but there’s equal enthusiasm for their originals, from opener Heading for the Door to closer Oysters in My Pocket (“we’re saving for lunch”). There’s the smell of tobacco smoke in the air during the sleaze-drenched Big Ciggie, and fans bellow the chorus of Sofa King (“you’re so f---ing gorgeous”) as Chippy flashes and strobes under the stage lights.

It’s unsurprising Royel Otis made such light work of two very different covers. Raised in the Spotify age, they’re adept in many genres, from the R&B vocals on Nack Nostalgia and funk rhythm of Foam, to a thrash interlude on Adored or the pop-punk melody of Claw Foot.

More enigmatic is guitarist Royel Maddell, who hides under long hair but still commands centre-stage. His playing is alternately snarling and sweet, sometimes within a single solo.

The duo cancelled their US December shows because of what Maddell described at the time as “devastating family matters”. On this night he dedicates Letter from Roy to his mum.

The band rips through more than 20 songs with little space in between, giving the impression, for this first return show, they are still coming in to land, rather than relaxing by the ocean.

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THEATRE
Joy (Riders) to the World
The Old Fitz, December 17
Reviewed by KATE PRENDERGAST
★★★

It was The Bear Pack that converted me to improv. Before seeing that now cult-status Aussie duo, I had an inbuilt, unexamined prejudice that it was a low form of comedy theatre – just an exercise in whacky cringe for attention-seeking amateurs or community-craving weirdos.

Mean. But aren’t you at least a bit guilty of the same?

What The Bear Pack taught me is that improv, realised at its protean, possibility-exploding best, is a kind of goofily embodied absurd philosophy. Because when you think about it (puffs an imaginary joint), human existence is improv, bro. We’re all just bumbling through – particularly in our social lives – falling headlong into unknowns that we have limited means to anticipate, reacting to them as best we can in all manner of creative contortions.

We can either be terrified of the chaos and cling to what’s familiar, or realise the madness and have fun with the free-fall. It’s about timing and wit, confidence and collaboration, innovation and chemistry; about inhabiting different personas according to the situational needs, knowing when to make space for others, and reading the room.

Steph Ryan, Jim Fishwick and Maddie Parker.Credit: Kirsty McGuire

With improv however (versus real life) the stakes are just making people laugh. And rather than suffering scenarios from which there is no mortal escape, our masters-of-scene use mime and language to compel their audience to collectively hallucinate them – and then transport us elsewhere. The space to play is infinite.

It’s a kind of winging-it magic. It literally makes me giddy.

There is occasional magic in Joy (Riders) to the World. Made up of Jim Fishwick and Maddie Parker plus a new guest for each night at the Old Fitz, its prompt for take-off is “What is something you wish you’d got for Christmas but never did?” One audience member called out “A PlayStation 2 and Spyro the Dragon videogame”, and we were off. The set remains as the night’s earlier show Snowflake left it – with the words “welcome home” on a closed curtain and a small Christmas tree to the side. This should be ignored.

With spontaneously conjured holiday-themed scenes distorting ever more outrageously through their transitions, we were first led inside Spyro’s animated realm, then from the tear-drop of a tower guard, to a bitterly divorced mother, to a disgraced Weiss employee, to a nepo niece lured into a body-swap horror. Our trio (with Steph Ryan as guest performer that night) gathered confidence as they jaunted, sometimes jaggedly, along their adventures. The last two scenes – featuring bitchy sisters and a cutlery set under threat – were the strongest.

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MUSIC
Jack White
Enmore Theatre, December 13
Reviewed by JAMES JENNINGS
★★★★

For any music artist who’s been around a couple of decades, a typical live performance will largely consist of the older songs people know and love with a few lesser-known new tunes sprinkled in, during which punters will head to the bathroom or grab another drink.

Jack White, rarely one to do things in a conventional way, inverts this ratio by playing most of his new album No Name, and rounding things out with a few hits from his beloved former band, the White Stripes. While this may sound like a disaster – a recent show in Sydney from Pearl Jam was roundly criticised for a lack of classics – it’s quite the opposite: the crowd go completely wild for the new stuff. Truly.

Jack White has gone back to what he does best – raw, riff-heavy blues.Credit: David James Swanson

That comes down to a couple of things. Firstly, No Name reverts to the raw, riff-heavy blues rock at which White excelled during the heyday of the White Stripes. While that may sound like pandering after a few of his recent albums that strayed from the formula failed to make much of a dent, it doesn’t come across that way – it’s simply White playing to his strengths, doing something his imitators have not been able to better.

The second is the intense energy White brings to the stage. The show opens with the kind of thunderous jam that usually closes out a show. It creates an electricity in the air that has Old Scratch Blues and That’s How I’m Feeling – the two opening songs on No Name – received like beloved classics, even though they’re less than five months old.

White’s solid three-piece band ably back him up as he becomes a whirling dervish of sweat and monster riffs, cycling through guitars like a master marksman choosing the precise weapon needed to make a shot.

The heaving crowd remain in rapture of White’s rock-godding for the entire show, and by the time he gets to inevitable show-closer Seven Nation Army, there’s no sense the audience has only been patiently waiting for this one moment. Instead, it’s a triumphant cherry on top of a consistently excellent show that proves, sometimes, an old dog doesn’t need new tricks when the old ones work just fine.

Jack White plays a second and final show at the Enmore Theatre on December 14.

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THEATRE
The Pigeons
KXT on Broadway
December 11. Until December 21
Reviewed by JOYCE MORGAN
★★★

Beware the office Christmas party.

With its veneer of enforced jollity, it provides infinite opportunities for fights to erupt, scores to settle and ambitions to surface. Just add alcohol.

The family reunion or dinner party might be more favoured theatrical devices for igniting conflict, but this absurd festive farce mines the dynamics of an office party to create a world where chaos and instability rule.

Amid his company’s Christmas bash, the boss, Robert (Mark Langham), confides that he intends to disappear. Not just from his party or for a seasonal break. He wants to vanish without trace, forever.

He plans to hand the business to his offsider. It’s a role for which the nervy, paranoid Holger (Andrew Lindqvist) is spectacularly ill-equipped.

The characters in The Pigeons vary from unstable to utterly unhinged.Credit: Justin Cueno

Holger is being bullied by the office junior Heidrun (Kandice Joy). She’s out to get him. So is everyone else.

Perhaps a psychiatrist, Dr Asendorf (Tel Benjamin), can help. But the dotty doc has troubles of his own. His bedside manner has gone AWOL. He’s unable to remember the names of his patients or even who he is sleeping with.

This play by Germany’s David Gieselmann is a peculiar work indeed. It has no protagonist or antagonist, no character development or discernible motives and a plot that goes nowhere.

Instead, there are nine main oddball characters who vary from unstable to utterly unhinged, each with an agenda of their own. They include Robert’s wife Gerlinde (Kath Gordon), who is determined to move to Liguria; their son Helmar (Jackson Hurwood), who prefers Scrabble to sex; and Holger’s wife Natalie (Lib Campbell), who is unable to control her anger.

Their grip on reality shifts by the minute. Or maybe reality doesn’t even exist, at least how we assume it does. Does Robert really disappear? Does he really have an identical brother and pigeon fancier? Or is it just Robert with a bad wig and faux French accent?

This is an unfathomable world in which nothing and everything is true. The rug is constantly pulled from under the characters and the audience. The cumulative effect is frustrating and wearing.

The prolific Gieselmann is best-known for his widely performed 1999 play Mr Kolpert, with its absurdist and hilariously gory splatterfest of a dinner party. Written a decade later, The Pigeons is a much less impressive piece.

Without tight direction and razor-sharp timing, the rapid-fire dialogue could so easily fall into an incomprehensible heap.

That it doesn’t is a credit to emerging director Eugene Lynch. He brings wit, energy and great imagination to the production. He also creates some laugh-out-loud moments, not least a sight gag involving part of the psychiatrist’s attire.

With a background in directing opera – most recently as assistant director on Pinchgut’s splendid Giulio Cesare – Lynch injects a musicality into the piece, aided by composer/sound designer Christine Pan.

This is a highly physical and impressively choreographed production by movement director/choreographer Cassidy McDermott-Smith. With nine actors on the tiny performance space throughout, that is no mean feat.

Lochie Odgers’ terrific set blends the banal and the bizarre. The bland office furniture – decked with tinsel – is delightfully at odds with the bold blue and yellow checkerboard carpet. It’s a set that takes a claustrophobic turn late in the piece. There’s no way out of this madness.

Although this is a strong production and well-acted by the large cast, there’s no getting around a mediocre play that simply does not take wing.

Director Lynch especially is a talent to watch. Let’s hope next time it is with a more worthwhile piece.