Brisbane Festival’s warehouse of wonder

Based on a poetic Italian novel, Brisbane Festival’s centrepiece Invisible Cities had the potential to be a melange of pretentious twaddle but it turns out to be artistic director David Berthhold's parting triumph.

IT COULD have been a grand folly but as it turns out Invisible Cities is one of the most memorable nights you will ever spend at the Brisbane Festival.

If artistic director David Berthold, who is delivering his fifth and final festival, was looking for a show that would take him out on a high, this is it.

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It is based on Italo Calvino’s classic 1972 novel Invisible Cities and if you’ve ever read it you’ll know that it’s a book that would be impossible to stage.

But try telling that to the folks at UK outfit 59 Productions and their friends.

Invisible Cities is a mind boggling flight of fancy and a hit at the Brisbane Festival

They have done the impossible and turned a vast old warehouse in Yeerongpilly into a cabinet of wonders for a few nights only and the venue, an old Queensland rail facility, works a treat and the parking and entry and everything is seamless. Well done team.

Conceived and designed by world leading theatre practitioners and architects 59 Productions, it brings together a team of global artists directed by 59’s Leo Warner and co-directed by famed Belgian-Moroccan choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui with multi award-winning writer Lolita Chakrabarti and Rambert, one of the world’s great dance companies.

It’s about the relationship between Marco Polo (Matthew Leonhart) and Kublai Khan (Danny Sapani) in the 13th Century. (You’ll recall Polo travelled the Silk Rodd and spent years in the Orient)

Danny Sapani (Kublai Khan) and Matthew Leonhart (Marco Polo) in Invisible Cities, which is wowing them at the Brisbane Festival.

Polo’s time in the great Khan’s court is explored in this amazing production and as in the book he describes fantastical cities in the great Khan’s realm to the ruler who is grieving for his dead wife and looking for meaning in his life, as well as a diversion .

The poetic text has been adapted to create a narrative that is powerful and fascinating and much rests on the shoulders of Leonhart and Sapani and they don’t disappoint. Sapani’s portrayal of Kublai Khan is positively Shakespearean.

Invisible Cities stars Salomé Pressac, Guillaume Quéau, Soojin Choi and Joaquim de Santana. Picture: Nigel Hallett

So is it a play? Not exactly. It’s much more ...a theatrical multimedia dance work of sorts with an extraordinary set designed by Jenny Melville who has created a remarkable visual tableau.

59 are known for their projection work and it is inventive and outstanding in this production. I can’t really explain how it’s done, you will have to experience it for yourself.

The seating in blocks around the set enables us to feel part of the action. We were sitting in the front row and the dancers were so close we could have reached out and touched them.

Luckily we didn't’.

The dancers from Rambert are extraordinary in the Brisbane Festival centrepiece show Invisible Cities. Photo by Justin Nicholas

Rambert have quite the international reputation and they are mind bogglingly good and there are some very special moments as Marco Polo unleashes his imagination on the Khan and it is all played out in three dimensions for our entertainment with the past eventually catching up with the present in some scenes.

Keep an eye out for the segment where all the dancers go shopping in a modern city. Terrific.

And there is a stunning surprise in the second half of this two hour show which will delight but my lips are sealed about that.

This production is really a kind of happening. It’s a perfect festival centrepiece. It’s ambitious, inspiring and hey, you’re never going to see anything like this again.

David Berthold programmed it before it had even been created and then flew to Manchester recently to see it debut at the Manchester International Festival and realised he had made the right decision. He has given us a very special parting gift. Thank you David.

INVISIBLE CITIES

Until Saturday, September 28

880 Fairfield Road, Yeerongpilly

Reviewed by Phil Brown, Arts Editor

4.5 stars