Catharsis and high kicks: Olivia Rodrigo’s first Melbourne show is a hit

MUSIC
Olivia Rodrigo | Guts World Tour ★★★★
Rod Laver Arena, October 9

Olivia Rodrigo is for this generation of teenagers what Avril Lavigne was for Millennials: a smart-mouthed purveyor of bratty pop-punk that flirts with a sanitised version of rebellion.

Olivia Rodrigo performs at Rod Laver Arena, October 9, 2024.Credit: Richard Clifford

The 21-year-old’s two albums, 2021’s Sour and 2023’s Guts, flit from heart-on-sleeve ballads to fiery kiss-offs, with boys the constant subject of her affection or rage.

To say Rodrigo’s first Australian tour was anticipated is an understatement: some eager fans had camped out at Rod Laver Arena since the weekend, hoping to get up close and personal with the former Disney star on her first of four nights at the venue.

“I want you to jump, I want you to scream and I want you to sing at the top of your lungs!” Rodrigo commands. The crowd is happy to oblige, often drowning her out by singing back every word. During quieter numbers such as Traitor, it’s overpowering, but it’s gorgeous to hear the audience take on the backing vocals on Vampire; there’s a sense of catharsis, singing with her on angsty breakout single Drivers License. Rodrigo encourages fanaticism, leading screaming competitions that reach ear-splitting levels – sympathies and kudos to all the doting parents in attendance.

She’s an energetic performer, high-kicking her way around the extended stage; her soprano voice is in fine form whether breathily singing or furiously yelling. An all-female band, backing singers and dancers, and the customary bright lights and moving video backdrops, round out the live set-up – though the choreography is sometimes superfluous for what mostly feels like an arena rock show.

To say Olivia Rodrigo’s first Australian tour was anticipated is an understatement.Credit: Richard Clifford

At one point, stars descend from the ceiling and Rodrigo sits on a moon that floats around the crowd. This magical set piece allows her to get closer to fans around the room, but the energy dips in this ballad-heavy part of the show.

She’s right back at it in the last third, with hits such as All-American Bitch and Good 4 U. The tots and tweens in attendance scream it all back with all the overwhelming feeling of a first heartbreak. This show is really for them – it’s delightful to witness young girls experiencing their first taste of live music with someone not so much older than them, who can look back with the nascent wisdom of young adulthood but still has so much to experience herself. When Rodrigo sings Teenage Dream, the backdrop shows home videos of her as a small child. It’s for her, too.
Reviewed by Giselle Au-Nhien Nguyen

MUSIC
Angela Hewitt in recital ★★★★★
Melbourne Recital Centre, October 12

For one of the greatest contemporary pianists, Canadian Angela Hewitt has been generous in her visits to Australia. Melbourne’s admiration was obvious in the sustained applause when she first entered the stage, but that was nothing compared with the applause at the end.

Pianist Angela Hewitt at an earlier performance. Credit: Lorenzo Dogana

In this carefully curated, nearly flawless recital, Hewitt played a Mozart fantasia (K475) and sonata (K457), Bach’s Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue, a Handel chaconne, and Brahms’ Variations and Fugue on a Theme of Handel.

Her constant virtues of clarity, subtlety, an exquisite sense of shape and balance, delicacy and precision were on full display in highly personal accounts that nevertheless elevated the music. Every note was precisely calibrated for its own touch and its relation to others, including the various notes within chords.

Hewitt played a Fazioli piano, less bright but more even than a Steinway, and it was a convincing choice.

In the Mozart, she highlighted the dramatic contrasts; in the Bach, her deep love and familiarity were evident in the crystalline clarity of the various voices; while the Brahms – a titanic test of endurance – was rhythmically flexible and quite percussive.

Talking to the audience before she began, Hewitt said the Brahms had its premiere at the hands of Clara Schumann, so no one should say a woman can’t play Brahms, as she was often advised as a student. Given her wrists of steel, Hewitt is certainly safe from such suggestions today.

It is hard to pick highlights from such a fine recital, but the slow movement of the Mozart sonata with its ravishing delicacy and organic fluidity, the talismanic Bach and the entire Brahms were particularly fine.

Congratulations also to Chris Howlett and Elle Fernon, whose debut as independent promoters this Hewitt tour is. They’ve started at the pinnacle, and it will be fascinating to see what comes next.
Reviewed by Barney Zwartz

DANCE
momenta ★★
Sydney Dance Company, Playhouse, until October 12

Rafael Bonachela’s latest full-length concert work – which he describes as a study of momentum as plurality, whatever that means – is a spectacular disappointment, amounting to little more than a series of twilight encounters of an amatory nature.

High kicks and splits of all kinds are Rafael Bonachela’s basic punctuation.Credit: Pedro Greig

The 15 dancers mince about the stage in their underclothes, which seems to be the company uniform, troubling the smoky air with fluid gestures of anguished desire, moving from one uninspired grouping to the next.

They ease themselves into one another and sink to the floor. They part softly, rising and releasing into well-balanced turns. They extend their arms, floating, yearning, wilting. A shoulder drops suggestively. It’s endlessly sappy stuff.

The choreography is organised around the crotch. High kicks and splits of all kinds are Bonachela’s basic punctuation. These sustain individual phrases while creating a relationship of exhibitionism with the audience.

At times, it comes off as an accidental burlesque. The central duet created with the andante solo violin of Peteris Vasks’ Distant Light – performed here on viola – is a case in point. It’s so vapidly erotic and yet so precious.

The company doesn’t perform with any great distinction, but then they’re not given much to work with.Credit: Pedro Greig

The use of Vasks throughout the performance, excerpted by composer Nick Wales, provides only a veneer of spirituality. This is what the critic Marcia Siegel once called polite pornography masquerading as mysticism.

The company doesn’t perform with any great distinction, but then they’re not given much to work with, only this perpetual writhing, swapping in and out. And really this is my main objection: momenta is so terribly passive, so undemanding.

The setting, dominated by hazy effects and a mobile array of lights, suggests nothing more specific than a commercial studio where an easy glamour is conjured from the play of coloured lights and shadows.

This is the sort of show that could only make sense if you placed a luxury car on one side of the stage: a missing focal point for manipulations that only want to sell.
Reviewed by Andrew Fuhrmann

MUSIC
Ensemble Q and William Barton ★★★★
Musica Viva, Melbourne Recital Centre, October 8

Approaching its 80th birthday, chamber music presenter Musica Viva remains full of youthful energy, not least because it is committed to the quest for developing and encouraging a uniquely Australian expression of a genre that previously seemed more connected with a distant, long-lost Europe.

Ensemble Q at an earlier performance in Perth. Credit: Tony McDonough

As Brisbane-based Ensemble Q tours the country, audiences witness the creative coalescing of elements old and new, most tellingly in its collaboration with legendary First Nations didgeridoo exponent and composer William Barton.

Clarinettist and composer Paul Dean and his wife, cellist Trish Dean, generate the artistic impetus behind the ensemble, which thoughtfully delves into the rarely heard repertory involving wind quintet.

William Barton’s Journey to the Edge of the Horizon was first performed during this tour.Credit: Tony McDonough

Opening with the pithy modernism of Six Bagatelles for Wind Quintet by Hungarian-Austrian composer Gyorgy Ligeti, the players relished not only the score’s musical witticisms but its sparse, economic style in which every note has a purpose.

Paul Dean’s 2018 Concerto for Cello and Wind Quintet begins interestingly and ominously with help from the additional timbres of cor anglais and bass clarinet. The cadenza-like material linking the movements particularly reveals the enviable technique and emotional depth of soloist Trish Dean. Some leaner textures at times would throw the soloist into greater relief against the accompanying backdrop.

German conductor and composer Heribert Breuer’s empathetic arrangement of Brahms’ Cello Sonata No. 1 for wind quintet and double bass highlights details that might have been submerged in the original piano part. In particular, the central Allegretto brings delicacy and delight.

Receiving its first performances on this tour, William Barton’s Journey to the Edge of the Horizon uses his own voice and his didgeridoo’s astonishing range to create a captivating soundworld which firstly celebrates the riches of his country but also bears witness to the power of Indigenous and non-Indigenous artists walking together on the path towards reconciliation.
Reviewed by Tony Way

MUSIC
The Weeknd | After Hours Til Dawn Tour ★★★★
Marvel Stadium, October 5

Abel Tesfaye, AKA The Weeknd, stands atop a medieval fortress, on a hundred-metre catwalk in the middle of Marvel Stadium.

The Weeknd performs at Marvel Stadium, October 5, 2024.Credit: Martin Philbey

He commands the stage like a guru, haloed by an afro and wearing a long black and gold robe. “Take me to a time,” he sings sweetly, “When I was young / And my heart could take the drugs and heartache without loss.”

He kicks up a gear as he sweeps across the stage, crooning through the infectious Michael Jackson-esque Wake Me Up. The crowd loves it – they will follow him wherever. As will the troupe of red-gowned dancers marching behind him, ghost-like. Somewhere at the back, a three-piece band keeps it all grounded to the hits.

The Weeknd commands the stage.Credit: Martin Philbey

And there are many hits, like Starboy, Can’t Feel My Face, and the massive Blinding Lights. He’s a true pop superstar, as well as a multimedia icon and entrepreneur – though the less said about his TV drama The Idol or his foray into NFTs the better. (A previous attempt to bring this show to Australia was sponsored by beleaguered crypto company Binance. It’s just the kind of terrible business decision we want from our pop stars.)

Many of these songs, despite the glossy, sexy energy, are about depression and drug ennui. His last album, Dawn FM, muses on death, mortality and madness. He’s been losing his memory. He can’t feel his face. When he’s f---ed up, that’s the real him, babe.

Tonight, it’s all wrapped up in this compelling if minimal stage set-up.

The robes, the architecture and the doom-laden imagery offset the smooth pop tunes as much as the lyrics do. On a huge screen at the back of the stadium, the Arc de Triomphe is shrouded in clouds, body parts sink through deep water and, I think at one point, a cocoon hangs from the ceiling of an old castle.

This is what pop music does best: equal parts crude and emotionally resonant, baffling and intimate. Good songs too.
Reviewed by Will Cox

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