Barrie Kosky’s take on The Nose proves a bit of a hoot

BIZARRE and anarchic, side-splittingly funny at times, Opera Australia’s production of Shostakovich’s The Nose is a bit of a hoot.

Martin Winkler has a tricky moment in Opera Australia's production of The Nose at the Sydney Opera House. Picture: Prudence Upton

• Carmen cuts it, Kombi and all
• Four world stars in the making
• Music with a cutting edge
• Out with the old and the new

BIZARRE and anarchic, side-splittingly funny at times, bewildering and absurd at others, full of unexpected gems, all wrapped up in Dmitri Shostakovich’s largely atonal musical package that ranges from the crash-bang-wallop school to the experimental orchestral pyrotechnics laboratory.

And yes, it has a message: forget the rules however strict, anything goes.

Surprisingly, it all works, more or less, thanks in no small part to an inspired high-energy cast of more than 80 performers backed by an in-form chorus and orchestra.

The standout on opening night was Austrian bass-baritone Martin Winkler, who has made a career specialising in wild characters and in classic buffo roles.

A natural clown with fine comic expression and timing, he played Kovalev, the pompous bureaucrat who wakes up to find his nose is missing and that it is off enjoying itself around town.

What follows is a hoot about a hooter (the British type, not the pendulous American alternative).

FRENETIC

We got noses galore: tap-dancing conks, farting schnozzes, swaggering nebs and stout snouts, not to mention blustering bugles and cute snoots.

We also got bearded male prostitutes dancing frenetically in corsets and suspenders, corrupt policemen reluctant to obey orders while their officers fulminate impotently and a conniving mother desperate to marry off her daughter.

Sir John Tomlinson and Antoinette Halloran in The Nose. Picture: Prudence Upton

In the midst of this confusion, cast members made the most of their opportunities to camp it up or emote like silent movie stars, comic acting at its zaniest.

As Kovalev’s footman, Russian-born bass Gennadi Dubinsky provided an Chaplinesque foil for his master and was almost as sublime in his buffoonery.

Soprano Antoinette Halloran, like many of the cast, had multiple roles: wife to Kovalev’s barber, pretzel seller and, best of all, as a modern-day observer questioning the point of an opera about a nose.

Jacqueline Dark made the most of her role as the countess obsessed with finding her lost dog, as did fellow mezzosoprano Sian Pendry, who played the woman Kovalev suspected off using witchcraft to steal his nose.

FORMIDABLE

Baritone Warwick Fyfe, no stranger to comic roles, found his inner wildness and displayed it in all its glory for the audience and Sir John Tomlinson, a bearded English bass with a formidable stage presence, played the doctor who fails to stick the nose back on Kovalev’s face.

Anything goes in Barrie Kosky’s production of The Nose. Picture: Prudence Upton

The nose itself was played by Alexander Lewis, who started his career as a baritone but now performs as a lyric tenor.

Barrie Kosky directed this inspired nonsense and conductor Andrew Molino somehow managed to interpret the score without losing the orchestra, or the audience.

This isn’t for everyone. It is perhaps too long at just under two hours (no interval) and sometimes self-indulgent, but the sheer exuberance of the cast, and Winkler’s astonishing artistry, more than make up for it.

DETAILS

● OPERA: The Nose, by Dmitri Shostakovich

● STARS: Martin Winkler, Sir John Tomlinson, Antoinette Halloran, Jacqueline Dark, Kanen Breen, Sian Pendry, Gennadi Dubinsky, Warwick Fyfe

● AT: Sydney Opera House

● UNTIL: March 3

● BOOKINGS: www.sydneyoperahouse.com, tel [phone]