Fans of Veep and The Thick of It will love this political farce

THEATRE
POTUS, or Behind Every Great Dumbass Are Seven Women Trying to Keep Him Alive ★★★
45 downstairs, until March 2

Germaine Greer observed that “c---” is “one of a few remaining words in the English language with the genuine power to shock”, although Germaine herself went from attempting to “take the malice out of it” to reclaim the word for women in the 1970s, to believing it could not be tamed and should be used sparingly.

POTUS: Or, Behind Every Great Dumbass are Seven Women Trying to Keep Him Alive by Selina Fillinger at 45 downstairs is a fantastic farce. Credit: James Reiser

Selina Fillinger’s unsparing feminist farce opens with a dysphemistic spray.

Set in the White House under a US president not unlike Trump, it follows desperate measures taken by seven women in his inner circle. Fans of behind-the-scenes political spoofs – Veep, say, or The Thick of It – should be darkly amused, if not edified, by the brazen intrigues and madcap antics on display.

Unpresidential language causes the initial crisis, which has the White House chief of staff (Carolyn Bock) and press secretary (Tilly Legge) trying to out-c--- each other like characters in a Mamet play.
POTUS has just told a roomful of diplomats, all gathered for a nuclear non-proliferation conference, that his wife can’t attend because she’s having “a c---y morning”. (The first lady is, in fact, in the room.)

An all-female crew of spin-doctors, sycophants and enablers goes into overdrive, but the crisis spirals into an omnishambles when a mousy secretary (Liliana Dalton) can’t stop the women in the president’s life – most of them at loggerheads – from escaping the revolving-door comedy and meeting in the same room.

The caricatures are cynically heightened grotesques. There’s the gun-toting, immensely accomplished first lady (Candy Bowers) whose marriage is a Faustian bargain; the president’s brash, drug-dealing lesbian sister (Hannah Greenwood), wanted in three countries and angling for a pardon; his young mistress (Lucy Ansell) rocking up with news of her pregnancy; and a prominent journalist (played by AYA) who’s hunting for a scandal while juggling serious motherhood issues.

A violent climax presages even more ludicrous action, as the play flirts with a feminist iteration of the Weekend at Bernie’s trope, before the cold reality of structural misogyny reawakens.

While a real sense of comic catharsis does elude this frenetic entertainment, POTUS is performed with flair by a ferociously talented and funny cast, combining physical humour, exaggerated lunacies and sardonic satire.

The “curtains behind curtains” design works well, though director Marni Mount could alleviate some sense of the futility, and the passivity, the audience might feel by including them more.
The play’s final reclamation of “c---” doesn’t feel like enough, given world events, and if these characters can’t break the glass ceiling, they could at least tear down the fourth wall to vent their rage and implicate us all more thoroughly in the unfolding shitshow.
Reviewed by Cameron Woodhead

OPERA
Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg ★★★★
Royal Exhibition Building, until February 22

In 1867, German composer Richard Wagner distracted himself from his massive Ring Cycle by penning this strange, bloated opera about a local singing competition; at over six hours including intervals, clearly some of the expansiveness and sheer heft of that larger work seeped through. It’s a kind of genius, then, that Melbourne Opera are staging it in the Royal Exhibition Building, where the size and grandeur are already built in.

Lee Abrahmsen and Steven Gallop star in Melbourne Opera’s lesser known Wagner work, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg.Credit: Penny Stephens

Director Suzanne Chaundy brings clarity and cohesion to the telling, while drawing out the comedy in the conceit. The townsfolk of Nuremberg take their comp extremely seriously, and the local artisans and merchants who run it follow strict rules about eligibility and structure. The prize is a local bride, Eva (Lee Abrahmsen), who is willing to give herself to the winner largely because she already knows who it will be, handsome outsider Walther (James Egglestone). Town clerk Beckmesser (Christopher Hillier) has other plans, and it all gets sorted out by wise cobbler Hans Sachs (Warwick Fyfe).

There’s an odd ambivalence at the heart of Meistersinger, which marries a sonically luxurious score with a fairly homely plot – the sort of thing Mozart would have popped out in under three hours. Wagner’s tendency towards transcendence has nowhere to go, so he channels it into an impassioned but rather academic treatise on German art and the value (and limitation) of tradition. It has nothing to do with what came later, but it reeks of the sort of nationalism that birthed the Nazi party. Chaundy sidesteps the political implications entirely, and the result is joyous and uncomplicated.

Musically, the production is close to flawless. The building’s acoustics are surprisingly effective, the singers soaring over the orchestra with confidence. Anthony Negus conducts with great suppleness and control, and the musicians bring fluidity and texture to the score. Fyfe is a powerhouse, pensive in repose and searingly authoritative in action. Abrahmsen and Deborah Humble (as Eva’s nurse, Magdalena) are vivid and funny, and Hillier triumphs as the Malvolio-like villain. Egglestone’s clarion tenor is suitably exalted, though he tends to run out of steam in the final act.

Meistersinger mightn’t be a great entry point to opera – it’s too long, and the story is slightly recondite – but it’s full of sublime music. Chaundy’s lightness of touch, the building’s awesome scale and the world-class performances in and out of the pit make it an aficionado’s dream.
Reviewed by Tim Byrne

MUSIC
The Balanas Sisters ★★★★★
Melbourne Recital Centre, February 14

Contrasting the old with the new and the dramatic with the meditative, Latvian violin-cello duo the Balanas Sisters made a dazzling first impression on Melbourne audiences.

Violinist Kristine and cellist Margarita united their dynamic musical personalities to present two bold baroque utterances interleaved with two contemporary contemplations.

The Balanas Sisters were captivating at Melbourne Recital Centre.Credit:

Beginning with an arrangement of Handel’s Passacaglia in G minor by 19th-century Norwegian composer violinist Johan Halvorsen, the sisters immediately seized the audience’s attention with feisty yet nuanced playing.

Their own arrangement of two movements from Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons (the first movement of Winter and the last movement of Summer) was also powered by seemingly inexhaustible energy. Both baroque works were illuminated by the bright tone and powerful inbuilt resonance of Kristine’s 1787 Gragnani violin and Margarita’s 1849 Charles-Adolphe Gand cello.

A complete change of mood came with Sanctuary by Adelaide-based composer Anne Cawrse. Here the duo’s keen ear for finely calibrated dynamics and tone colours came to the fore, the score’s initial evocation of birds using the so-called “seagull effect” beloved of Peter Sculthorpe alternating with more fluid ruminative passages.

Based on the writings of the 16th-century Spanish mystic Teresa of Avila, Castillo Interior by fellow Latvian Peteris Vasks juxtaposed moments of linear introspection with more turbulent minimalist textures.

Ravel’s Sonata for Violin and Cello provided the perfect conclusion to this stellar recital. A work of startling modernism rather than hazy impressionism, the sonata in the sisters’ hands sounded as fresh as when it was written in the early 1920s.

Relishing the challenges of this technical tour de force, their fearless playing brought abundant character to the witty, pizzicato-driven scherzo and rustic finale, creating a foil to the relatively placid first and third movements.

Such an engrossing study of contrasts can only raise the hope that these consummate musicians will soon return.
Reviewed by Tony Way

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