Amy Hack is captivating as Yentl in this transgressive tale’s return

This wrap of shows around Melbourne includes the return of Yentl at the Malthouse, The Sound of Music in St Kilda, an adaptation of Maxine Beneba Clarke’s bestselling memoir; Sampha at Margaret Court Arena; a gig by an iconic pop-punk band; and a fiery triple bill at the Melbourne Recital Centre.

THEATRE
Yentl ★★★★
Malthouse, until March 17

Barbra Streisand retains exclusive copyright to the English translation of Isaac Bashevis Singer’s short story Yentl following her 1983 directorial debut where she starred as the namesake character. Kadimah Yiddish Theatre circumvented that by adapting the original Yiddish text, culminating in a remarkable bilingual play, reprised for a return season after garnering widespread acclaim in 2022. This adaptation of Yentl is steeped in a deep reverence for Yiddish culture, Jewish mysticism and an unmistakeable queerness.

Evelyn Krape with Amy Hack, who is captivating as Yentl.Credit: Jeff Busby

Yentl (a revelatory Amy Hack) longs to study the Torah, a scholarship exercise reserved exclusively for men. The death of their beloved father, who encouraged them in their intellectual pursuits, sets the stage for their transformation: into a man named Anshl. They meet Avigdor (played with a rangy freneticism by Nicholas Jaquinot) and both immediately hit it off, debating Jewish theology and philosophical interpretations with an unparalleled fervour. A love triangle of sorts soon ensues, however, when Anshl marries Hodes (Genevieve Kingsford), whose betrothal to Avigdor was severed for reasons beyond their control – provoking chaos, confusion and heartbreak.

Hack and Jaquinot’s exchanges are electric and emotionally charged, imbued with sparks of possibility and renewed understanding as Anshl indulges their unquenchable thirst for knowledge and Avigdor grapples with his sudden affinity for this serendipitous stranger.

In the film adaptation of Yentl, songs voiced by Streisand’s soaring vocals lent viewers a glimpse into characters’ interiority and acted as a narrative medium of sorts. Here, that role is assumed by a yeytser ho’re (Evelyn Krape), an impish and impudent dybbuk whose wicked cackles, incessant goading and lewd gestures bear witness to all that unfolds as she simultaneously guides and leads Anshl astray in their quest to transcend social strictures and attain a liberty hitherto denied. Krape oscillates between playing other characters with aplomb, but she’s outstanding as the portentous dybbuk.

A large house looms in the background of Dann Barber’s moody, shadowy set – underlining perhaps how the domestic realm is a perennial site of contention for Anshl. Following the show’s interlude, a bed materialises, symbolising that the betrayals set to unfold are of a private, more intimate nature.

Betrayals set to unfold: Genevieve Kingsford and Amy Hack in Yentl.Credit: Jeff Busby

Yentl is at its most electrifying when it stages competing scenes between the characters; Hodes immersing herself in the mikveh the night before her wedding as Anshl is caught in the throes of a menacing fever dream is a particular highlight.

Singer’s original text was no doubt transgressive in its time, and under Gary Abraham’s direction, Yentl leans into the character’s transness. “There is nothing about being a woman that has felt right to me,” Anshl exclaims, as they confess to being Yentl, to being simultaneously neither and both, to occupying a liminal, liberatory space unconstrained by such binaries.

Hack is captivating in the titular role. The final scene is a fittingly beautiful and profound denouement to a story about living life on your own terms.
Reviewed by Sonia Nair

THEATRE
The Sound of Music ★★
National Theatre St Kilda, until March 17

Whether The Sound of Music is one of your favourite things or not, chances are you know all the words. The popularity of the Rodgers and Hammerstein classic is renewed and refreshed with each generation of kids who learn to sing Do-Re-Mi, that disarming melodic introduction to the solfege system which remains part of musical pedagogy today.

Pictured with the Von Trapp children, Tayla Dwyer invests the role of Maria with boundless charm. Credit: Nicole Cleary

Children are always the heart of the show, from a big commercial revival at the Regent with Amy Lehpamer as Maria to the cult-like Sing-A-Long-A Sound of Music, a remastered screening of the 1965 film featuring uninhibited audience participation.

The young performers playing the Von Trapp siblings this time around are an unalloyed delight and thank goodness for them. Some members of the adult cast seem determined to flaunt their imperfections.

Not Maria, of course. The musical’s heroine must sing and act with spotless precision for the musical to fly and Tayla Dwyer invests the role immortalised by Julie Andrews with boundless charm. A slight case of opening night nerves settles quickly into a complete performance as a young woman whose only sin (a venial one) is her helpless passion for music.

Dwyer lights up the stage, especially in scenes with the juvenile performers and opposite the Mother Abbess (Amanda Stevenson, whose sturdy soprano ascends to the peak of Climb Ev’ry Mountain with ease).

Leading men in Australian musicals are a much thornier problem to solve than Maria, alas, and the romantic plot comes unstuck through risible acting.

What to say about John Parncutt’s wooden incarnation of Captain von Trapp? The performance makes Cameron Daddo’s workmanlike showing in 2016 look like histrionic genius. It appears to betray such a lack of talent and technique that I didn’t know whether to be amused or alarmed. It was like watching an amateur go mountain-climbing. Without equipment. In the nude.

Oddly, Parncutt can hold a tune and act through song – his halting rendition of Edelweiss is an authentic emotional moment and on a musical level, this production is more satisfying, delivering plenty of vocal enchantment and a lush live score.

John Parncutt and Brett O’Meara in The Sound of Music: vocal enchantment and a lush live score.Credit: Nicole Cleary

A more sombre note is struck as you enter the auditorium, where a sign informs patrons that the show complies with new laws banning the use of Nazi symbols and gestures. Onstage swastikas are allowed for artistic purposes, and they’re a source of deep discomfort in 2024, given the rise of far-right white supremacist groups in Victoria.

So, while it’s a shame director Karen Schnider hasn’t whipped some of the supporting performances into shape, the show’s unskilled acting isn’t the end of the world. Outside the theatre, after all, there are much graver issues at stake.
Reviewed by Cameron Woodhead

THEATRE
The Hate Race ★★★★
Malthouse, until March 17

If you were to have your life immortalised in a stage show, what would you include – and what would you omit? This question is all the more pertinent in the case of Maxine Beneba Clarke, whose bestselling, award-winning 2016 memoir The Hate Race has now been transformed into a theatrical production.

Zahra Newman gives a powerhouse performance in The Hate Race.Credit: Tiffany Garvie

The book and play trace Clarke’s childhood of growing up Black in white middle-class Australia in the ’80s and ’90s – specifically the northwestern Sydney suburb of Kellyville. The virulent bigotry Clarke faces from teachers, students and her community and the heartbreaking internalised racism this provokes finds its antithesis in the loving family home her Afro-Caribbean parents create, in the pride of descending from a rich cultural heritage that spans continents.

The episodic one-woman show is a jam-packed 65 minutes of Zahra Newman traversing Maxine’s past and present selves as well as other characters from the book: mother Cleopatra, father Bordeaux, younger brother Bronson, first – but not last – bully Carlita Allen, and the many ineffectual teachers who were ill-equipped to help Maxine navigate the bloodthirsty arena of a racist playground.

Newman is an utter powerhouse. Bounding across the stage in overalls that are at once childlike and adult, she transitions seamlessly from character to character, embodying different accents, mannerisms and ways of being with a virtuosic skill that never leaves you in doubt as to who she’s playing.

Accompanying Zahra Newman onstage is multidisciplinary performer and musician Kuda Mapeza.Credit: Tiffany Garvie

Accompanying her onstage is multidisciplinary performer and musician Kuda Mapeza, a singular stand-in for a chorus that grounds the key moments in Maxine’s life in a specific time and place – think John Farnham, Frente!, En Vogue and Des’ree.

Mapeza is Maxine’s cheerleader, her conscience, her salve. A one-person show can be a hefty undertaking but in Mapeza, Newman has someone to bounce off, an onstage companion who mirrors her emotions, heightens the highs and wallows in the lows with her. There’s song and dance and dramatised ’80s-style montages mined for laughs.

The source material is awash with a litany of devastating racial slurs that Maxine grew up hearing. That a derogatory word isn’t uttered in The Hate Race until nearly halfway through the set time feels intentional – the harm of these words isn’t reproduced in a live setting where there’s no reprieve or escape. The threat of them is sinister enough.

The centrepiece of Zoë Rouse’s simple set is an eye-catching floor with swirls of brown that call to mind a melted paddle pop.

Props are minimal but used with aplomb to recreate the emblems of an Australian childhood. Rachel Lee’s lighting design is supremely effective – the warm light that bathes Newman for much of the play switches to a harsh blue and strobe lights in more uncomfortable moments.

Quoting poet Nikki Giovanni in her book’s acknowledgements, Clarke says “people will never understand that all the time, I was quite happy”. And that is perhaps the biggest takeaway of The Hate Race – there are unjust, unwarranted microaggressions and violence levelled at minority identities in so-called Australia, but there’s also an unparalleled sense of joy, strength and belonging.
Reviewed by Sonia Nair

MUSIC
Sampha ★★★
Margaret Court Arena, March 1

Sampha Sisay is a lights-out kinda guy. As a soul singer, he’s more What’s Going On than Sex Machine; as a performer more Quiet Storm than Heat Wave. He comes in near-darkness, light against vast black curtains, and mounts a podium centre-stage behind a bank of keys, as his black-clad band conjures the space vista of the song Plastic 100°C.

Sampha at Margaret Court Arena: embracing the infinity within.Credit: Martin Philbey

The softly spoken Londoner introduces them before the second song, the better to blend into the collective. Joyful but deferential, he guesses we can stand if we want to. Most of us do. Dancing is not mentioned.

The intense, multitasking quartet is positioned in a tight circle facing in, bassist Rosette and drummer Blake Cascoe up front with their backs to us, percussionist Ruthven and keyboard player Elsas a tier behind, like the choir they also become. Their harmonies are airy clouds of exhilarating strangeness, peaking with a finger-clicking a cappella Can’t Get Close.

The darkness barely recedes for 90 minutes as our spirit guide embraces the infinity within. “I can see an inner vision,” he raps against the unhurried, pillowy piano of Satellite Business. “Love will catch you, spirit gon’ catch you”, is the promise of the moonlit Spirit 2.0. “I fell lifted from above,” is the ecstatic refrain of Suspended.

The tension is between the muted tone of Sampha’s high-and-higher voice and the frantic polyrhythms driven by Cascoe. The measured movement of jazz-infused electric piano chords drags against the clattering matrix of percussion. Chaos is calmed by the singer’s higher purpose.

Sampha’s multitasking quartet provides harmonies of exhilarating strangeness.Credit: Martin Philbey

“You make me cry!” a voice calls from the dark after (Nobody Knows Me) Like the Piano, the signature solo piece that encapsulates Sampha’s eternal introspective distance, despite serial collaborations with megastars like Kanye, Kendrick, Drake and Travis Scott.

Apart from the Sbtrkt track Hold On, it’s all his own work tonight, climaxing with the panic attack of Blood On Me, which is calmed with a solo encore, Happens. The humble soul man thanks us until the houselights chase him away.
Reviewed by Michael Dwyer

MUSIC
Shonen Knife ★★★★
The Corner Hotel, February 28

Since 1982, the Japanese trio Shonen Knife has been playing their unconventional, yet simple brand of pop-punk rock to increasing numbers of fans. Amassing a cult following after the release of Burning Farm (1983) and Pretty Little Baka Guy (1986) on alternative labels K Records and Sub Pop, they catapulted to international fame after Kurt Cobain invited them to open for Nirvana in 1991. And they’ve only kept going, with memorable ditties such as Twist Barbie and Jump Into the New World, their trademark infectious punk rock putting smiles on faces and causing even the grumpiest of people to bop along to their music across the world.

Six years after their last tour to Australia, Shonen Knife is back.Credit: Martin Philbey

Six years after their last tour to Australia, the trio is back, with original members, sisters Naoko Yamano and Atsuko Yamano at the helm and Risa Kawano (who joined in 2015 at age 22) as drummer. Shonen Knife presents a particular predictability that, unlike typical interpretations of the word, leans towards creating an atmosphere of optimum comfort. Imagine your favourite childhood meal, or a TV show you’ve watched 10 times—that’s Shonen Knife for you.

Fans understand this too. Playing to a packed-out room on a Wednesday night, one can see how they’ve managed to keep their older fans while accumulating new ones with every album. Here to promote their latest, Our Best Place (2023), an amalgamation of styles – power pop, hard rock, punk – developed over the 21 albums in their discography, it’s a delight to witness how the trio has managed to retain their vigour without becoming lacklustre or trite.

This is no mean feat. Lesser bands have persisted with their musical career after decades, only to fade into mediocrity. Naoko’s slide guitar solos are impeccable, and the Yamano sisters’ unadulterated enthusiasm comes through.

It’s an understated joy to see middle-aged Asian women rock out, still a rare sight despite significant female representation in rock bands over time. Wearing their signature matching-yet-distinct dresses designed by Atsuko (who is also a fashion designer), the band’s on-stage chemistry is palpable, with pitch-perfect harmonising in songs such as Cycling Is Fun, on top of intermittent synchronised headbanging from the sisters throughout the one-hour set.

Risa Kawano is clearly enjoying what she does while being incredible at it.Credit: Martin Philbey

At some points towards the end, Kawano stands up to drum too, her bright smile not leaving her face the entire time – this is not a persona; she is clearly enjoying what she does while being incredible at it. Grins, smiles and laughter erupt through the crowded room.

Of course, long-time fans know that the two sisters have a deep love for tennis. There is never no mention of tennis with Shonen Knife. “If I wasn’t in Shonen Knife, I’d be a pro tennis player!” Naoko tells the audience midway into the set, grinning.
Reviewed by Cher Tan

JAZZ
Lonnie Holley + Moor Mother + Irreversible Entanglements ★★★★
Melbourne Recital Centre, February 28

On record, the music of US free-jazz collective Irreversible Entanglements is fiery and focused. On stage, that fire becomes a raging blaze. For this fiercely uncompromising quintet, apathy is not an option.

For this fiercely uncompromising quintet, apathy is not an option.

As they explain in the liner notes of their latest album (Protect Your Light), their aim is nothing less than the advancement of human potential, self-determination and liberation. And they don’t feel the need to couch their messages in sweet melodies or metaphors.

On Wednesday night, the spoken-word poetry of Camae Ayewa (aka Moor Mother) was often unapologetically political.

Early in the evening, her rhythmic recitations made pointed references to the current conflict in Gaza (“They say they have all of the rights and none of the wrongs”), her body vibrating with passionate intent. Later, she railed against colonialism and chastised the Commonwealth – including Australia – for “running away from its permanent stain”.

Around her swelled the sounds of empathy, indignation, hope, despair and compassion, expressed in virtuosic bursts of squalling horns, restless drums, agitated bass and a cosmic array of electronic effects.

At 74, Lonnie Holley conveys both the wisdom of an elder and the wide-eyed wonder of a child.Credit: David Raccuglia

The heavy-duty reverb and amplification meant that both Moor Mother’s poetry and the individual contributions of each musician were frequently lost in the sonic maelstrom. The overall impact was undeniably powerful, but at times I longed for a little more space and clarity.

That spaciousness arrived in the second set, along with vocalist-keyboardist Lonnie Holley. At 74, Holley conveys both the wisdom of an elder and the wide-eyed wonder of a child. Part mystic, part preacher, he roamed the stage and offered his thoughts in sung form, connecting earth and sky, suffering and love, humanity and Mother Universe.

The band absorbed his spirit and created spontaneous soundtracks tinged with soul, blues and gospel, culminating in a joyful Afro-Latin finale. So what began as confrontation ended in celebration – two sides of the same coin for this remarkable coalition of artists.
Reviewed by Jessica Nicholas

The Booklist is a weekly newsletter for book lovers from books editor Jason Steger. Get it every Friday.