Brisbane Festival opens with ambitious retelling of Homer’s Iliad
The opening act of this year’s Brisbane Festival was nothing less than a retelling of one of the most famous stories in western literature. And it was a complete success, writes Phil Brown.
Brisbane Festival
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The guys behind Dead Puppet Society (DPS) won’t die wondering that’s for sure. Might as well deliver your magnum opus while you can still enjoy it, right?
Nicholas Paine and David Morton are the brains behind DPS and are pretty well geniuses in my book and they have given us some amazing nights in the theatre.
Friday was opening night for Brisbane Festival and DPS pretty well threw everything including the kitchen sink into their festival offering this year.
Holding Achilles is a slightly queer retelling of the Iliad. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, as Jerry Seinfeld would say.
Focusing on the relationship between two Homeric Greek (or Achaeans as they were known) heroes, DPS teamed up with acclaimed Sydney physical theatre company Legs on The Wall for this show, fleshing out the story of love between Trojan War heroes Achilles and Patroclus, a story that has been with us since antiquity.
It’s a moving tale beautifully told, and with so many moving parts I wonder how they thought they could pull it off. But they do and they will do so until September 10 in the Playhouse at QPAC.
It was a full house at the Playhouse for opening night and lovely to have Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk and her partner Dr Reza Adib there along with Arts Minister Leeanne Enoch, Cr Vicki Howard, QPAC chief executive John Kotzas along with Brisbane Powerhouse head honcho Kate Gould and mum Jenny, among others.
After the opening ceremony at South Bank Piazza we all trouped over to the Playhouse excited to see what DPS had come up with this time.
I know they’ve had some technical issues mounting this work but it’s impressive in so many ways and I almost forgave them for the fact that it went 15 minutes longer than expected. A bit of tinkering and tightening would help realise its full potential.
But having said that I was entranced and transported by this intelligent, entertaining and at times almost bewitching show which featured the most amazing music by ARIA-nominated record producer Tony Buchen and Chris Bear of Brooklyn-based indie rock group Grizzly Bear.
The singer Montaigne performed their songs live on stage as a kind of one woman Greek chorus and she was incredible, otherworldly. We all felt sorry for her when she had a bit of a coughing fit towards the end but she recovered quickly. Her performance was just so cool and enchanting.
Working with Legs on The Wall meant lots of movement and choreography and some daring aerial work with characters flying around above the stage. Even Montaigne got airborne at one stage!
Leading the cast is Stephen Madsen as the warrior Achilles and Karl Richmond as his lover, Patroclus.
They are joined by a stellar cast with Ellen Bailey as Ajax, Hector (she plays a Greek and a Trojan!) and acting as puppeteer too on the amazing puppet bear that turns up in the forest scene.
Odysseus is John Batchelor, Lauren Jackson is Agamemnon and is also a puppeteer and Thomas Larkin is Meneleus and Pelus, Nic Prior is Paris and Chiron, Christy Tan is Brisels, King Priam and Chryses is played by Jennifer Vuletic, Montaigne stars as Achilles’ dead mum Thetis and Johnas Liu is part of the ensemble and works as a counterweight on the flying scenes.
Madsen is excellent, as is Karl Richmond and they bring emotion and pathos to these classical roles.
John Batchelor is always a wonderful presence on stage and it’s great to see Thomas Larkin and Lauren Jackson back on stage in Brisbane.
I kept having flashbacks to them in Macbeth some years ago at Queensland Theatre. Larkin was, correct me if I’m wrong Tom, Macduff and Lauren Jackson played one of the witches in that show. Now they are together again beneath the walls of the city of Troy.
These actors are all solid and that makes this a play, as well as a musical, as well as a dance work, as well as an art house music project and happening. There are so many elements at work with wonderful staging and it all works like clockwork, mostly. I know there have been a few glitches but who cares?
I’m just grateful that a theatre company would even bother to try making a work based on The Iliad, one of the foundation works of the western literary canon.
Personally I found the second half more to my taste as it turned positively Shakespearean with some wonderful dramatic dialogue. David Morton is a fine, intelligent writer and director and if you’re a fan of the classics you will appreciate that he has remained faithful to the main strands of the text.
I think we all know how the Trojan War ended (the Trojan horse, hello!) but the way they get to that is clever and funny. Despite the pathos and gravitas yes, there is humour too.
This is the sort of work you go to a festival to see ... something daring, something risky, something inspirational.
I re-read The Odyssey last year and let me assure you that I will now embark on a re-reading of The Iliad.
I might even watch the movie Troy again. Remember Brad Pitt as Achilles? Of course you do but I reckon Stephen Madsen is better. Just saying.
brisbanefestival.com.au
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