One-man show about Sudan makes spirits soar above the sadness

THEATRE
Lose to win ★★★½
Belvoir St Theatre, April 27. Until May 19
Reviewed by JOHN SHAND

Not a soul is born without a backstory, but few are as gripping as Mandela Mathia’s. Not many who haven’t also grown up in a war zone and sought safety elsewhere suffer such trials as infant, child, youth and adult – and then prosper despite racism taking the sheen off that safety.

Mandela Mathia’s real life story is the basis for Belvoir’s production of Lose to win.Credit: Brett Boardman

Mathia, an actor, has turned his story into a one-man show, directed by Jessica Arthur. This he delivers with engaging zest, sparsely accompanied by Yacou Mbaye’s live percussion. Your admiration for him grows throughout the show – not so much for his resilience as for his undimmable optimism, a quality that kept his head above the raging waters of adversity, and now infuses his performance.

Growing up in civil war Sudan, Mathia’s nicknames were those of guns: Kalashnikov, AK-47 and more. His father, a target, fled to save his family. He was shot, nonetheless, his memory just a shadow in Mathia’s infant past. Then, in her desperation to alleviate her young family’s hunger, the loving mother who had named Mathia after Nelson Mandela crossed a river in an overcrowded boat and drowned.

Such crushing events are leavened with song, while Kate Baldwin’s lighting plays in different ways upon Keerthi Subramanyam’s simple but evocative set.

In an interlude, Mathia explains something of Sudan’s history. Using the cute device of black, brown and white shoe polish, he tells how South Sudan finally split in 2011, without this solving many ingrained problems.

Mandela Mathia explaining some of Sudan’s history in Belvoir’s production of Lose to win.Credit: Brett Boardman

In 2000, at seven, he was sent to live in the “safer” north with a relative whose own children had been killed. The young Mathia tries to ease this woman’s financial burden by shining shoes and other odd jobs.

When the dream of Australia is sown, they’re advised to move to Egypt to facilitate the migration process. Despite assorted tripwires, the little family is eventually interviewed, eventually allowed to come.

Yet some of the saddest moments occur after his arrival when Mathia tells of people preferring to stand on a bus than sit beside him or of Dutton’s infamous dog-whistling over Melbourne’s Sudanese gangs.

Your heart is full at the end: full with Mathia’s suffering, warmth, humour and lust for life. The show could be even stronger, however. Some of the jokes are laboured, and both the writing and the delivery cry out for more tonal variation.

CLASSICAL MUSIC
Osmo Vanska conducts the music of Sibelius.
Sydney Symphony Orchestra.★★★★½
Opera House Concert Hall, April 24.
Reviewed by Peter McCallum.

Finnish soprano Helena Juntunen began the first bracket of orchestral songs by her great compatriot Sibelius with a haunting sound of arresting strength before moving into a quieter narrative veiled in mists and elusive strangeness.

Finnish soprano Helena Juntunen and conductor Osmo Vanska with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra.Credit: Jay Patel.

None of these songs had previously been performed by the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and she and conductor Osmo Vanska introduced them with vividness and care, capturing both the breadth of Romantic gesture that Sibelius inherited from the European music of his time and the distinctive modal turns and rhapsodic rhythm from which he created his personal musical language.

The first song, Autumn Evening, expresses solitary thoughts before the vastness of nature. The second song, Baron Magnus, had lighter, enigmatic humour in a line-by-line folksong-like structure.

Juntunen tapered each phrase with suggestive coyness as the text told of a duke lured into watery depths by a sea nymph before waking, unharmed on a bank of violets.

Finnish conductor Osmo Vanska.Credit: Jay Patel

The third dwelt whimsically on the swift passage of time before opening out on the call in the final line to embrace fleeting youth.

Framing this bracket were two purely orchestral works. Pohjola’s Daughter, Opus 49, began with a chant-like idea in shady depths, moving through striving and strife to a tousling climax on brass as though buffeted by fate.

The Bard, Opus 64 prefigures the pared-back style of Sibelius’s later works in which his language darkened, and extraneous embellishment was discarded. Gnomic phrases from the orchestra fit around spacious declamatory harp chords tinged with dissonance.

Juntunen returned for the last song, Luonotar, which blended the narrative approach of the earlier songs with this newfound terse style. She seared through the orchestra in tumultuous passages, assuming a luminous vocal quality in moments of sudden radiance and dissolving to nothing towards the close.

In the second half, Vanska led the SSO with exacting care through Sibelius’s Lemminkainen Suite Opus 22, comprising four symphonic poems based on the Finnish epic, the Kalevala.

Vanska drew out every small refinement of orchestral timbre and balance to create interest in small moments while also shaping the overall architecture to build exciting listener involvement.

The first movement, Lemminkainen and the Maidens of Saari, began with sensuous oboe lines and rustic rhythms before building towards a climactic moment with urgent desire reminiscent of the phrase structures of Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde.

Cor anglais player Alexandre Oguey captured the essence of The Swan of Tuonela in a sound of depth and veiled mournfulness. The third poem, Lemminkainen in Tuonela, swirled in eddying textures, capturing the unpredictable wildness of nature.

The last movement, Lemminkainen’s Return, was an energised gallop to the close, full of fearsome leaps, sinewy strokes and breathless abandon. It is 20 years since Vladimir Ashkenazy’s cycle of all Sibelius’s symphonies with the SSO, and Vanska has offered here a most welcome opportunity to reengage with that composer’s alluring mysteries.

COMEDY
Chris Ryan: Good-O ★★★★
Enmore Theatre, April 25. Until April 28

Comedian Chris Ryan recently came across the work of stoic philosopher Epictetus, who counselled readers to surround themselves “only with people who uplift you.” She had unknowingly been living by a very similar credo; she’s had a “strict no f----heads policy” since high school.

Having first tried stand-up comedy in her late 30s, the no-nonsense Ryan is something of a rarity on the Australian scene as a middle-aged woman still in the relatively early stages of her career.

Comedian Chris Ryan.

Entering the youth-dominated open mic circuit with some life experience has given her a different perspective, and she’s grown into a distinctive, vital voice. Good-O introduces new wrinkles into Ryan’s comedy as it fleshes out her jaded worldview.

It’s perhaps her most personal work yet, digging into her relationship with her parents. She aspires to be more like her father, who responds to rudeness or aggression with the sign-off “Good-O”, but more closely resembles her mother, who shares her tendency towards rage.

She’s tried therapy, something her Boomer parents wouldn’t countenance, to get to the root of her discontent. Yet, as her mother helpfully pointed out: “It doesn’t seem to have fixed you.”

The differing values across generations prove a fertile comic ground for Ryan. Now, she marvels, grandparents can be an involved, nurturing presence in their grandchildren’s lives.

Back when she was a kid, their attitude to her could be summed up as: “You’re a blood relative. I guess you can have a biscuit.”

Ryan has an understated style, but her writing is sharp and spiky as she winningly turns her ire on laughing yoga, motivational speakers and Instagram gurus. You sense her most complete work is still ahead of her, but for now, this is a trenchant, acutely funny hour, raging against modern malaise but never pretending to have all the answers.

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