Don Giovanni, Bran Nue Dae, Barry Otto, SIX, Fiona Foley and more: your January arts roundup
We review Bran Nue Dae and SIX, talk to the fight choreographer for Don Giovanni, reveal actor Barry Otto’s secret love, and much more. SUMMER ARTS IN SYDNEY
Arts
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Many of us are headed back to work in February. But there’s still plenty of time to enjoy all that Sydney has to offer. So, have some fun, take in a show and dip your toe into some art and culture as Sydney’s summer of arts unfolds.
OPERA REVIEW
Show: Opera Australia’s Don Giovanni
When: January 24 to February 27
Where: Sydney Opera House
Tickets: $49-$369
Website: opera.org.au
Review: Sue Williams
IT was written as a comedy but in these #MeToo days of taking predatory lechery and sexual assault much more seriously, this dark production of Don Giovanni first created in 2014 for Opera Australia feels terribly contemporary.
As a Don Juan character with menacing Jeffrey Epstein undertones, this Don Giovanni is one of the vilest anti-heroes ever to have stalked the stage, attacking one woman in her bedroom at night and killing her father, while abandoning another and stealing a third on her wedding day. His appetite for women is enormous — he needs them more than air and food, he says — and he takes them, chews them up and spits them out, ruined and broken-hearted, as soon as he’s done.
This version of the Mozart classic by renowned Scottish director David McVicar looks grim and threatening from the start, with Robert Jones’s forbidding grey set of high stone walls moving to trap characters, a stairway thudding down into place and piles of bones and skulls trickling onto the stage.
The characters are all dressed in monotone colours and the whole atmosphere is of doom as Don Giovanni hurtles inexorably towards his morality tale fate.
But that’s not to say this isn’t entertaining. It is. Even the grim ending (spoiler alert) with a crowd of ghoulish figures who wouldn’t be out of place in The Walking Dead rising from hell to claim their victim, is as startling as it is, yes, welcome.
Italian baritone Luca Micheletti is a stirring Don Giovanni, portrayed as a dark, amoral, ravenous figure, devouring everyone in his path, and with a huge voice exerting his power and insatiable appetite. He looks suitably dashing but his presence is quite dastardly.
He has a wonderful foil in Australian bass-baritone Shane Lowrencev, last seen as the hapless painter Schaunard in La Boheme, who plays his vacuous man-servant Leporello for huge laughs.
With a real gift for physical comedy, he’s the dorky onlooker who tries to rein in his master but then becomes seduced by lust himself. A highlight is his rendition of the catalogue aria, in which he lists the vast toll of his master’s conquests around the world.
Don Giovanni’s female victims are also outstanding. Australian soprano Eleanor Lyons makes a magnificent Donna Anna, whose bedroom is broken into at night and then whose father is killed by the Don. Her beautiful voice soars between horror and rage and misery, and finally, the hunger for vengeance.
Also a remarkable presence is fellow Australian soprano Jane Ede as Donna Elvira, the woman hopelessly enamoured who returns to him again and again, and is cruelly tricked into believing he’s remorseful about deserting her.
Then there’s up-and-coming Australian mezzo-soprano Anna Dowsley as the bride taken on the day of her wedding, a beautiful performance as the fragile, but feisty, Zerlina.
It’s a long evening — nearly three and a half hours including the interval — but the action is brisk, the vocals are stunning and some of the scenes, such as Don Giovanni’s party, with the stage filled with writhing, grinding figures, are simply spectacular.
Don Giovanni runs at the Opera House until February 27.
OPERA
Show: Opera Australia’s Don Giovanni
When: January 24 to February 27
Where: Sydney Opera House
Tickets: $49-$369
Website: opera.org.au
SWORDS flash and clash as Troy Honeysett fights an Italian baritone in a rehearsal room at the Opera House. Watching him move, it’s hard to tell whether the Sydney action man is a ballet dancer, athlete, gymnast or martial arts expert.
Actually, 33-year-old Honeysett is all that and more. Throw in jousting and rock climbing, and you get the picture. Honeysett’s physical prowess has landed him roles on stage and screen, sometimes wearing 57kg of armour on a charging horse and sometimes not.
Now he is fight choreographer and coach on Opera Australia’s two current shows at Bennelong Point. Mozart’s Don Giovanni opens tomorrow night. Bizet’s Carmen is on until March 26.
“It’s trying to find the blend between authenticity, but then also presenting it for dramatic effect,” Honeysett says.
It’s Honeysett’s first OA engagement, but he’s no stranger to the art form. He worked on two productions of the esteemed Pinchgut Opera, as an actor, assistant director and movement coach.
This week he was coaching the dastardly Don Giovanni, sung by Italian baritone Luca Micheletti in his role debut. As for his own fight skills, Honeysett keeps them honed as part of his daily fitness plan.
“Certain skills can’t sit on the shelf too long,” he says.
His regular week includes 14 hours training with a competitive gymnastic squad, as well as martial arts tricking — “the acrobatic side of martial art” — and callisthenics.
“I find if I train at that level I’m still pushing and progressing beyond just maintaining,” Honeysett says.
Honeysett’s life of physicality began in Alice Springs where he was born. He learned taekwondo and karate from the age of five at the Alice YMCA before the family moved to Queensland.
He went to Toowoomba Grammar and competed internationally in martial arts. He then did three years of full-time classical ballet training with the New Zealand School of Dance. “It was the hardest thing I’d ever done,” he says. “I just fell in love with it.”
Between the ages of 21 to 26, Honeysett performed with the Australian Dance Theatre and toured to Japan, Europe and the UK.
“It was gruelling — hard and ballistic on the body,” he says.
Next was three years at NIDA to hone his acting skills. Last year he learned how to ride a horse and joust in full armour for a film project. Add to that his job as a movement and acrobatics teacher at NIDA, and you won’t see Troy Honeysett out of shape any time soon.
MUSICAL REVIEW
Show: Bran Nue Dae
When: Until February 1 (before touring)
Where: Parramatta Riverside Theatre
Website: opera.org.au
There’s a beguiling sweetness to this 30th anniversary revival of Bran Nue Dae — Australia’s first indigenous musical — which is playing the Riverside Theatre in Parramatta as a feature of the Sydney Festival.
The show looks and feels like what it is, a heartfelt and good-humoured call to home and family that sprang entirely from the West Australian town of Broome.
It’s remarkable and special that the show features performances by the descendants of many of the original creators, the late Jimmy Chi and his band Kuckles.
For example, the associate director is Naomi Pigram, daughter of Kuckles member Stephen Pigram who was the musical director on Bran Nue Dae in 1990.
Naomi’s son Taj and daughter Tehya both perform in the revival, and Naomi’s brother Bart has taken over as musical director. Just about everyone on stage can trace their roots to Broome.
The show is a co-production of Opera Australia, the West Australian Opera, Opera Queensland and State Opera South Australia. But it is staunchly all-indigenous, and as a result it has an authentic quality that would be impossible to reproduce if more bells and whistles had been added.
Marcus Corowa was utterly delightful as Willie, the innocent and eager youth who runs off from his Perth boarding school to get home to his girl, Rosie, in Broome.
Rosie was played by Teresa Moore. Moore is radiantly beautiful with a smile to die for and a lovely stage presence, although her singing was a little weak on opening night.
Baritone Andrew Moran was hilarious as Father Benedictus and in his other roles. Callan Purcell and Danielle Sibosado as the hippies Slippery and Marijuana Annie were superb. They faultlessly provided a comedic flavour as they represented the outside world as it ebbed towards the township of Broome. (No spoilers for what happens when they get there.)
Ngaire Pigram as Aunty Theresa had a great voice, and of course Ernie Dingo — reprising his 1990s role as the original Uncle Tadpole — was profane and fabulous.
Kuckles provided the onstage music, the sets gave a sense of how beautiful Broome must be, and altogether Bran Nue Dae gave itself a bright new dawning.
EXHIBITION
Artist: Barry Otto
Show: Otto: An Artist’s Life
When: January 19 to February 23
Where: Belle Epoque Fine Art and Antiques, Petersham
Website: belleepoqueantiques.com
BARRY Otto stands amid stacked paintings and piles of books in the creative jungle of his Lewisham home, propelling his right arm in such vigorous circles that his spare body almost lifts off the floor.
The stage and screen legend (Bliss, The Dressmaker, Strictly Ballroom, The Great Gatsby, Oscar And Lucinda) is showing off his shoulder replacements.
His surgeon told Otto he might live to be “a f...ing hundred” if he walks four miles every morning. So off he goes after breakfast, before returning home to paint.
To what? Not many of his fans realise this fact, but Otto was an artist — and a successful one — long before he even thought about acting. But on the eve of his 79th birthday on January 22, all that will change when Sydney is treated to a wide-ranging exhibition of his life’s work — his first exhibition in nine years.
Otto uses a paintbrush with tenderness and a reverence for beauty. He readily acknowledges his debt to Pre-Raphaelite masters such as Lord Frederic Leighton and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, whose work he adores. Renoir is another influence.
About 75 paintings drawings now fill Belle Epoque Fine Art and Antiques in Petersham, ready for Saturday’s opening night of the exhibition, called Otto: An Artist’s Life.
Leigh Capel, formerly of Sotheby’s and now co-owner of Belle Epoque, worked alongside Otto to select works for the exhibition. Capel had met the whirlwind Gracie Otto, a film director, who introduced him to her father. Gracie’s mother Sue Hill says Gracie is making a documentary about her dad but is too busy to finish it just yet. “The little blonde,” Otto calls Gracie, eyeballs rolling dramatically.
Feted actor Miranda Otto, by the artist’s first marriage, lives and works in Los Angeles and was the subject of a large canvas Otto once entered in the Archibald Prize at the Art Gallery of NSW. (His son Eddie breaks the mould, and is a cricket coach.)
Once Capel had met Otto, he made a goat track across Otto’s overgrown garden as he went from the house to the old coach house which Otto uses as a studio, selecting paintings to show. Otto also scoured the house to find paintings from literally decades ago.
“He was pulling some out of the crawl space in the roof,” Capel says.
About 75 paintings and drawings will be on view in the exhibition, although about 150 are for sale in total.
Despite having an atmospheric, wood-panelled studio, Otto prefers to paint at a shady spot beneath the washing line and clothes pegs near the back door. He works there pretty much every day. Painting is an obsession that dates back to childhood. Although he has had exhibitions before, he mainly paints for himself. “It’s my life,” Otto says.
Otto realised he could become an artist when he was 14 or 15 and still living in his home town of Brisbane. May Stephens was a wealthy golfer and sawmill heiress who treated Otto like her own son and introduced him to the arts.
One day, Otto was left at Stephens’ home in charge of her elderly mother. Otto had brought his watercolours and some paper with him, and he took a Norman Lindsay picture of mermaids off the wall and propped it up on the billiard table. Without warning, Stephens returned home and caught Otto copying the Lindsay.
“I thought, ‘is she angry? What’s she going to say?’,” Otto says. “She said, ‘boy, you have to go to art school’. She sent me to Brisbane Tech.”
Otto studied art and became a leading advertising and fashion illustrator in Brisbane, before discovering his talent for acting. But he never neglected his first love, which will now be on view for all to enjoy.
STAGE
Artist: Grayson Perry
Show: Them And Us
When: January 16
Where: State Theatre
Tickets: statetheatre.com.au
Grayson Perry is in Sydney to present his one-man show at the State Theatre this week. And just what the British cross-dressing contemporary artist will say in Them And Us is making even this exponent of the outrageous a tiny bit nervous.
“You’ll see why I’m kind of slightly anxious about it when you see the show, because there are a few things I’m trying out for the first time,” the UK artist said.
“I don’t want to give away too much about where I’m going with the show, but I do a special new bit at the end because I wanted to ramp it up a bit and I thought, ‘what issue would I do it about for Australia?’ And I thought, ‘climate change is a big issue in Australia’.
“This is about two or three months ago and, of course, since I made that decision and started working on (the show), it’s become a much more serious and sensitive and emotional issue here. So I’ve got to think about how am I going to deliver this. Mustn’t trample on any sensibilities, you know?”
Perry is renowned as an acute observer of social trends so, climate change is bound to be a big topic in his show.
“In Britain, unlike here, I don’t think there’s such a political divide over climate change,” he said. “In Britain I think all the parties pretty much understand that it’s a serious issue that has to be acknowledged. So, that’s a difference that I think Australia has to face up to. Maybe. I don’t know.”
Perry can’t be accused of flying in, posturing about climate change, and flying out. His own brother lives in Sydney “pretty close to (the bushfires), I think”. In fact, back in London, Perry wondered whether coming to Australia would be a good idea or whether he would “just contribute to the general chaos” during the fires.
“People have got better things to do than come and see me. I felt a little bit guilty,” Perry said.
But he’s over the guilt and here he is, busily adding the final touches to his show. These are based on his latest research into local social conditions. For instance, he lunched in London recently with Australian author Kathy Lette.
“She gave me quite a few pointers about ScoMo and the political situation here,” Perry said.
He still has his ear to the ground in Sydney. Perry is arguably one of the world’s most famous artists whose work encompasses intricate ceramic pots and giant tapestries that tell stories about the messiness of contemporary life and the strange fashions to which human populations fall prey.
Sydney experienced Perry at first hand in the 2015 exhibition, My Pretty Little Art Career, at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia. He arrived at the opening dressed as his alter ego, Claire.
“With a keen eye for detail and a love of the popular and vernacular, Perry infuses his art works with a sly humour and reflection on society past and present,” the MCA said in material surrounding that exhibition. Perry’s subjects included “his own family, the art world, Biblical stories, the royal family, and images of warfare and sexual fantasy”.
Perry’s recent London exhibition was called Super Rich Interior Decoration and “was all about super rich people and what they want in their houses”, Perry said. Ironically, exactly what a lot of those super rich people want is a Grayson Perry.
The artist called his new show Them And Us after the polarisation of strident opinion which passes for current debate. “I wanted to talk about those issues but have some fun with it and talk about our natural human instinct to belong — to have an in crowd and an out crowd,” Perry said.
MUSICAL REVIEW
Show: SIX
Where: Sydney Opera House
When: Until March 5
A pop beat, sexy dancing, sassy Tudor-esque costumes and six very opinionated beauties with great voices make up this show which is surely destined to be a smash hit. First night in Sydney saw the audience leaping spontaneously to its feet and fist-pumping its appreciation of Henry VIII’s six wives — Catherine of Aragon (Chloe Zuel), Anne Boleyn (Kala Gare), Jane Seymour (Loren Hunter), Anne of Cleves (Kiana Daniele), Katherine Howard (Courtney Monsma) and Catherine Parr (Vidya Makan).
Titled SIX, this faux royal musical is a British import with an all-Australian cast and directed by the Australian Sharon Millerchip.
It’s a fascinating show with a great backstory. It was written in 2017 by Cambridge University students Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss, and garnered headlines when it premiered at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
It went on to become a West End musical, and it was recently announced that the show will also be seen on Broadway.
Not bad for two young people with virtually no theatre experience.
Seen at the Opera House as part of the Sydney Festival, SIX is an adrenaline rush that feels like a cross between a rock concert, a musical and an all-girl sitcom.
Huge credit to all six cast members — and the live all-girl band — who made us ponder just what guts and strength it must have taken to be the wife of the red-headed man with the enormous codpiece.
EXHIBITION
Artist: Fiona Foley
Show: Who Are These Strangers And Where Are They Going?
Where: National Art School Gallery, Darlinghurst
When: Until February 8
Not one but two strands of Australian history come full circle at the National Art School Gallery’s new exhibition of work by leading contemporary artist Fiona Foley. The first is Australia’s oldest known song, written in 1770 by Foley’s Badtjala ancestors on their homeland of Fraser Island when they saw Captain Cook sailing past in the Endeavour.
Foley, 260 years later, has incorporated that song into her new video artwork on view at the beautiful Darlinghurst gallery. The video is titled Our Of The Sea Like Cloud.
The second strand of history is the National Art School itself, to which Foley is essentially coming home. She studied at NAS from 1982 to 1983 when she was straight out of high school.
Foley’s exhibition, curated by Djon Mundine as a Sydney Festival event, is named after the words of the Badtjala song Who Are These Strangers And Where Are They Going?
For Foley, using the song in her new video speaks to her interest in taking little-known events from history and putting them “in a different context so non-indigenous Australians are aware of what happened in this country”.
“There has been so much denial and silencing, the art is a way for me to communicate this history that took place here,” Foley said.
In Foley’s film, the song (with extra verses written in Badtjala language) accompanies imagery filmed mainly on Fraser Island. Although Foley favours the use of untrained actors, the central figures in her new film are experienced performers. Joe Gala, the male singer and lead male actor in the film, is an indigenous performer and Badtjala man who is a regular model for the prominent indigenous photographer Michael Cook.
Teila Watson, known in her performance life as Ancestress, wrote the musical score and was the female singer in the short film. The exhibition offers a view of Foley’s installation work as well as her various photographic series.
OPERA REVIEW
Production: Carmen
Where: Sydney Opera House
When: Until March 26
It’s Bizet does Broadway! John Bell’s production of Carmen has so much fluorescent razzle-dazzle and so many flamboyant flourishes along with the bright lights, dance, acrobatics and steamy sexiness, it’s a fiesta for opera-lovers and newcomers alike.
Everyone on stage performs with such energy and a great sense of fun — along with the (spoiler alert!) brooding tragedy — this 2016 version of the legendary 1875 masterwork is well on the way to becoming a classic itself.
Bell has introduced a huge musical theatricality to the opera, moved it from its usual Seville to a crumbling Havana, Cuba, and peopled it with soldiers straight out of the Cuban Revolutionary Armed Forces. That innovative setting becomes the perfect excuse for the vividly coloured dresses of the women and garish check trousers, loud shirts and Panama hats of the men, all popping against the pale background of the faded town square. It also showcases great dancing and acrobatics, especially by the street kids on the stage, with a plot
revolving on gypsy smugglers and contraband. You do need excellent casting, however, to ensure the music and song isn’t overwhelmed by the visual spectacle and, happily, this has it.
Italian mezzosoprano Veronica Simeoni plays Carmen with such a smouldering sizzle you know from the start men will get burnt. Her soaring rendition of the standout Habanera at the start sets up beautifully the story to come.
Simeoni dances like a dream too, and so seductively, you can see half the men in the audience falling for her, as well as those on stage. And even when, on opening night, she stumbled as she tripped down a stair backwards, she missed not a beat, nor a note.
The chemistry she has with fellow Italian tenor Roberto Aronica, as her ill-fated soldier lover Don José, is no doubt helped by the fact that the pair, in real life, are a couple. So if the clinches and kisses go on a touch too long, you have to forgive them. Aronica is a wonderful foil, full of strength, anger and pathos by turn, with his heartbreaking Flower Song sung with a beautiful rawness.
His rival in love, Escamillo, played with a triumphant swagger by Polish bass-baritone Lukasz Golinski, is magnificent too, with his Toreador a showstopper. Meanwhile, Carmen’s rival for Don José’s affections, Micaela, is sung with a charming modesty and restraint by Italian soprano Claudia Pavone.
The retro set design is by Michael Scott-Mitchell – whose Sydney Olympic cauldron is the youngest item on the State Heritage Register – and is nicely inventive with a veteran Kombi, at one point, taking the stage, and later a vintage flat-bed truck.
The costumes, a veritable show all on their own, are by Sydney-based Teresa Negroponte, a regular in theatre, opera, musical theatre, film and TV, while the original choreography is by the hugely talented performer and creative director Kelley Abbey.
This is Carmen as it really could be on Broadway. The moment when the bullfighters march in, dressed in their glowing silk suits and flanked by multi-coloured piñata bulls, is worth the price of admission alone.
– Sue Williams
OPERA REVIEW
Production: La Bohème
Where: Sydney Opera House
When: Until January 30
Australian-Chinese tenor Kang Wang has a voice that could make angels weep – and that’s rain from the heavens we dearly need.
Gale Edwards’ much-loved La Bohème production for Opera Australia may be set in the deep winter chill of The Weimar Republic in 1930s Germany, but there are always moments that resonate with Australia today.
The heated argument, for instance, between the artists over what, among their meagre possessions they might burn to warm them up in their freezing garret. Or the moment they manage to light a fire and smoke drifts over the audience – reminding the senses of the real smoke outside.
Finally, when “the signs of the Apocalypse are upon us …” filled the theatre, I wasn’t the only audience member to flinch.
But, if anything can momentarily distract us from the catastrophic situation in Australia, it is this wonderful version of the Puccini classic, especially with the 31-year-old operatic wunderkind Wang playing poet Rodolfo.
Now one of the most sought-after opera stars in the world, Queensland-trained Wang has the audience in the palm of his hand the moment he steps onto the stage and his first words ring out. With a voice of molten chocolate that slides over even the highest notes, and an assurance and stage presence far beyond his years, he’s the man to watch, now and for the future.
His Mimi, the lonely, consumptive seamstress, is played by South Korean soprano Karah Son, who holds her own beautifully in his company.
Last year, she dazzled in Graeme Murphy’s production of Madama Butterfly and here she also shows her range, from the humble worker to the proud lover and, finally, as the woman around whom everyone gathers.
Other standouts are Australian bass Richard Anderson as the philosopher Colline who really makes sense of the aria to his coat which he pawns for medicine – something that has to be one of opera’s oddest descants.
And then there’s Julie Lea Goodwin who brings a delicious flirtatiousness and sense of fun to the character of Musetta, part Marilyn Monroe, part Madonna, who drives the painter Marcello, played by Samuel Dundas, wild with desire and anger.
The staging and costumes are also stars. The artists’ drab studio is transformed in the second act into busy streets on a turntable stage, filled with sellers of food, flowers, toys and a jewellery salesman tottering on stilts who opens his coat to display his glittering wares, as well as a marching band and a host of kids from the Children’s Chorus.
Then it suddenly changes again, with the stage pillars revolving to reveal the interior of the gilt and rich red velvet Cafe Momus. It comes complete with women in lingerie posing on the balconies and wealthy male clients seeking their favours – an image of Berlin cabaret excess contrasting starkly with the artists’ straitened circumstances.
The third act is another surprise but, with thanks to set designer Brian Thomson and costume designer Julie Lynch, and revival director Liesel Badorrek, let’s keep it that way.
– Sue Williams
CIRCUS
Time Flies: The Flying Fruit Fly Circus
Where: Seymour Centre
When: January 14-19
Tickets: $45; sydneyfestival.org.au
Sydney loves a good circus. Cirque du Soleil regularly stops here, Circus Oz packs them into the Big Top, even the Sydney Opera House now hosts spectaculars such as Cirque Stratosphere, which will return to the famous sails from January 14 to 19.
Given our penchant for ringmasters and straw flooring, a special anniversary visit by The Flying Fruit Fly Circus is bound to be warmly embraced as a major highlight of the upcoming Sydney Festival.
The Fruit Flies were originally named for the quarantine station near their headquarters in Albury/Wodonga. People crossing the NSW/Victorian border dumped their fruit there to prevent the pesky insects from spreading.
But 40 years later, a genuine buzz now surrounds the nation’s key youth circus, and the troupe will no doubt pour everything into its Sydney Festival shows to mark the start of its fifth decade.
The Fruit Flies have performed at several previous Sydney Festivals but their new show, Time Flies, breaks the mould. It’s the first time the entire company of 70 acrobats and aerialists has ever appeared together on the one stage, according to Fruit Fly artistic director and long-time circus trapeze artist Anni Davey.
And in a special tribute to the company’s first 40 years of training and performance, Time Flies will be tinged with nostalgia as original costumes are evoked in some of the current designs and some of the old acts are revisited.
Having said that, looking backwards is definitely not the show’s artistic focus.
“Really, Time Flies is a celebration of the next generation of circus performers and how fabulous they are,” Davey said.
One of those performers is Davey’s 14-year-old daughter Nell Finch, who really couldn’t help but become a performer. Davey herself has a long career in the circus arts — including a bad fall at the Edinburgh Festival in 1991 that sidelined her for two years. She was chair of the Australian Circus and Physical Theatre Association from 2010-17. Nell’s dad Mike Finch was artistic director of Circus Oz for 17 years.
“(Nell) could climb a rope 7m (high) from the time she was about six,” Davey said.
She loves that her daughter is a circus performer with a 21-hour weekly training schedule at the Albury/Wodonga headquarters. But she quietly hopes Nell goes to university and gets a “proper job”, because circus life “hurts” and doesn’t pay well.
Nevertheless, Davey is an eloquent champion of the idea that circus arts should be taught to all children — no matter their physical type — because it builds trust, collaboration and diversity.
“We need the brawny kids who stand at the bottom of the pyramid and the tiny ones who stand at the top, and the bendy ones who can do contortion and the solid ones who can climb up poles,” Davey said. “We need the introverted ones who can stand in the corner and juggle seven balls, and we need the extroverted ones who can stand in the middle of the stage and talk to people.”
These fun Sydney musicals were inspired by films
You’ll find all the above at The Flying Fruit Fly Circus which is federally funded and takes students from eight to 18 years old. Head of training is former Cirque Du Soleil trainer French-born Loic Marques who is a big factor in the Fruit Flies’ professional approach.
“You’re looking at really top-notch performers doing incredibly high-level skills, but also layered with imagery and context which makes it a really mature performance,” Davey said.
OPERA REVIEW
Great Opera Hits
Where: Sydney Opera House
When: Various dates until October 26, 2020
Tickets: opera.org.au
Opera purists may view it as something of a travesty but for those not so familiar with the art form, or who regard it with a little less enthusiasm, this is a fabulous night out at the opera – without the boring bits.
For it has something of everything: tremendous arias, a couple of magical duets, easy-to-follow explanations of the storylines of some of the best-known works, drama, lots of laughs and even a little singalong.
The team that turns Ben Mingay into Shrek
An operatic singalong? Yes, you heard right. And while the musical efforts of the audience left a great deal to be desired, it was all good-humoured, immensely enjoyable and left no one in any doubt just how hard it is to hit the high notes, even when you’re just tra-la-la-ing to the tune.
This new season of Opera Australia’s Great Opera Hits is a knockout, and for a variety of reasons.
For one, it gives those not so used to opera a delicious taste of what it’s like and — who knows? — perhaps a reason to come back and try a whole opera next time. For seconds, it gives visitors, both local and international, a compelling reason to buy a ticket to see something at the Opera House. And thirdly, it’s a beautifully accessible introduction to some of the greatest operatic works ever written.
The program includes a series of big hits that will be instantly recognisable even to those who’ve never knowingly listened to opera. All the stunners are there, like the Toreador Song and Habanera from Bizet’s Carmen, Flower Duet from Lakmé by Delibes, Largo al factotum from Rossini’s The Barber of Seville and, of course, Nessun Dorma from Puccini’s Turandot.
The evening’s hosted by musical entertainer, conductor and ABC Classic FM presenter Guy Noble, who also plays the piano, introduces each act and gives us a neat introduction to opera, where everyone “falls in love very quickly and 20 minutes later, all die.”
With sharp precises of men behaving badly (as they do in most opera), women suffering terribly (ditto), and nearly everyone, by the end, coming a cropper, it’s fun, lighthearted and never pretentious.
It’s also a wonderful showcase for the pure voices of some of Opera Australia’s greatest stars. The premiere, for example, featured tenor Simon Kim, baritone Haotian Qi, soprano Danita Weatherstone, and the huge, richly-rounded power of mezzosoprano Celeste Haworth.
The setting is simple: just the grand piano, a few chairs scattered around and a side-table, but the lighting and evening dress of the singers help ramp up the occasion, while keeping it nicely informal.
And a testament to the evening? A friend I took along, who’d never been to see opera before, ended up in tears before the interval listening to Kim and Qi singing of camaraderie between men in one of the greatest male duets ever written, Au fond du temple saint from Bizet’s The Pearlfishers. Ah, the potency of opera to entrance, bewitch and move … Just try it and see.
– Sue Williams
THEATRE
The Midnight Gang
When: January 3-21
Where: Playhouse, Sydney Opera House
Tickets: from $35; sydneyoperahouse.com
At first, it sounds like David Walliams is confiding his innermost thoughts about house cleaning. “I think you have to do it when you’re not inspired, otherwise you put it off,” the British author, actor and comedian said.
“Sometimes it feels like a chore because you can’t get anywhere and it’s very demoralising.”
But Walliams, whose children’s books have sold more than 32 million copies worldwide, is not on about dusty skirting boards. He’s talking about writing, and specifically his 2016 No. 1 bestseller The Midnight Gang, whose hospital-bound young characters are set to break free of the printed page and appear on the Sydney Opera House stage for the school holidays.
The Midnight Gang is about 12-year-old Tom who cops a wallop on the head and winds up in a hospital ward with other youngsters. But are these kids miserable? They are not.
Walliams imbues them with humour, resilience and a healthy spirit of adventure so they can realise their dreams despite their afflictions. It’s a delightful, heartwarming book that Maryam Master has made into a stage play.
Being well-known as an author, as well as for his performances in BBC One’s Little Britain and as a judge on ITV’s Britain’s Got Talent, Walliams is often asked to visit children in hospital. And that’s what inspired him to write The Midnight Gang.
“I’ve met lots of amazing kids over the years and obviously it’s very, very painful when you meet someone in a situation where they are terminal and it’s really, really difficult,” Walliams said. “It’s very hard walking into that situation as a well-known person but I have met kids very close to the end and sometimes so close they can’t respond in any way.”
In those particularly heartbreaking moments, which sometimes take place in hospital and sometimes at the family’s home, Walliams simply sits with the child and reads his stories out loud. All he can do, he said, is hope the child is enjoying the story.
“My job is not to break down in tears, but to distract,” he said. “But it’s quite hard holding it together. Obviously as a parent it’s brought home to you even more what a nightmare that situation is.”
Walliams is keenly aware of the “privilege” of bringing comfort to an ill child. “If the child is communicative we might like to have a chat or have a laugh,” he said. He is endlessly impressed by the courage of kids he has visited when they are sick.
“I’m always struck by their spirit,” Walliams said. “They’re in difficult circumstances and they’re not beaten by it. It’s very inspiring.”
Walliams takes a disciplined approach to the craft of writing. But half way through a book, he usually finds the story takes over his pen and “in a way, you can’t go fast enough”. “When it’s like that, it’s exciting,” Walliams said. “You can make yourself laugh and cry. It’s very strange. You know it’s made up, but it still hits you emotionally.”
Given his background in performance, it’s not surprising that Walliams enjoys the crossover between his books and the theatre.
In Sydney, the book will be brought to life by a cast including Alex Beaume as Tom, Emma Kew as Amber, Nicholas Starte as George, Kyle Kaczmarczyk as Porter and Lucy Heffernan as Sally/Matron/Nelly.