After a blistering Golden Plains set, this duo sets out to conquer Melbourne

This wrap of shows around Melbourne includes a memorable follow-up to a blistering Golden Plains set, a five-star performance of one of the most enduring and popular symphonies, the menacing Victorian gothic drama of Gaslight, classic ’80s pop at the Palais with The Human League, the return of a Hitchcock espionage thriller and a deep commitment to crowd-surfing from The Streets.

MUSIC
Charlotte Adigéry and Bolis Pupul ★★★★
The Night Cat, March 13

“You all came to see us – that’s incredible!” gushes Charlotte Adigéry, looking around with amazement. The Belgian musician seems surprised, but after a blistering set with collaborator Bolis Pupul on the weekend at the Golden Plains music festival, it’s no shock that gig-goers flocked to sell out their first-ever Melbourne show.

Bolis Pupul and Charlotte Adigéry perform at The Night Cat. Credit: Richard Clifford

The pair creates a club-like atmosphere that draws from various genres and techniques.

Singing in both English and French, Adigéry’s airy vocals float above Pupul’s pulsing beats as he hovers over a mixer. Pupul also distorts his own voice through a vocoder, Daft Punk-style, and picks up the bass guitar to provide a throbbing foundation, as on Making Sense Stop.

The transitions between songs are seamless, and the party really gets started when the duo drops Blenda and the crowd sings back every word.

You wouldn’t expect it from the infectious beats, but that song is about xenophobia and racism – “Go back to your country where you belong / Siri, can you tell me where I belong?” Adigéry intones. Many of the songs on their 2022 debut album Topical Dancer explore similar themes.

This duo transformed an ordinary Wednesday night into something memorableCredit: Richard Clifford

That juxtaposition – heavy themes with a light touch – is what makes their music so memorable, as well as the sonic strangeness of songs such as It Hit Me, which sounds like a chaotic circus meltdown, and HAHA, where Adigéry laughs melodically and maniacally. Both are replicated perfectly live.

The pair is backdropped by a large screen, which flashes strobe lighting and provides a canvas for Adigéry to strike silhouetted poses.

It doesn’t fully work with the Night Cat’s unique 360-degree stage – punters standing towards the back have their view completely blocked.

Adigéry makes up for that by ensuring she slinks around to sing in the corners where possible. Magnetic and generous, she and Pupul transform an ordinary Wednesday night into something to remember.

Reviewed by Giselle Au-Nhien Nguyen

MUSIC
Mahler 3 ★★★★★
Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Hamer Hall, March 14

Mahler’s third symphony, voted in history’s top 10 by a 2016 survey of more than 150 conductors, is a formidable challenge of will, stamina and technique for orchestra and conductor.

Jaime Martin conducts the MSO in a performance of Mahler 3.Credit: Laura Manariti

The longest symphony in the standard repertoire, it took the Melbourne Symphony about an hour and 40 minutes on Thursday night at Hamer Hall – 100 minutes of constant intensity and skill. This might be slightly on the longish side, but MSO chief conductor Jaime Martin kept the tension taut throughout so that it never dragged.

The third is often regarded as Mahler’s hymn to nature – he himself told his protégée Bruno Walter that it was a comprehensive image of nature’s immortality – and he gave the movements titles such as What the Flowers in the Meadows Tell Me, What the Animals of the Forest Tell Me and What Love Tells Me before instantly repudiating them as leading to “horrendous misrepresentation”. Its premiere in 1902 was a triumph for Mahler, unfortunately rare during his lifetime.

Martin and his massive forces – more than 100 musicians plus upper voices choir, children’s choir and American mezzo Raehann Bryce-Davis – met every challenge with panache, while the section principals covered themselves with distinction in their various solo requirements. Shane Hooton (off-stage) and Owen Morris (trumpets), guest concertmaster Dale Barltrop, Mark Davidson (trombone) and Nicolas Fleury (horn) in particular stood out.

Raehann Bryce-Davis sang movingly with a rich purity and emotional depth, and the choirs blended beautifully.Credit: Laura Manariti

Once or twice I felt that Martin’s love of dramatic flair overwhelmed the musical balance, but this was pardonable in such a thrilling performance. He captured the ferocious intensity of the first movement, giving way to the flowing, lilting middle movements and the visionary final movement.

Bryce-Davis, a satisfyingly deep mezzo, sang movingly with a rich purity and emotional depth, and the choirs blended beautifully.

The MSO audience was fortunate to hear such a fine performance, and they were well aware of the fact, with many rising to their feet at the end.
Reviewed by Barney Zwartz

THEATRE
Gaslight ★★★
Comedy Theatre, until March 24

No, you’re not going mad. The damsel in distress in Patrick Hamilton’s Gaslight (1938) is indeed usually rescued by a man. Here the writers remove the white knight, giving our heroine the opportunity to escape her tormentor through her own wit and agency. It’s an inspired stroke in an otherwise staid commercial revival.

Hamilton’s play has had lasting influence. It popularised the domestic peril subgenre of the psychological thriller, a durable and bankable form that reinvents itself with every new fashion. (By the time of the Hollywood classic with Ingrid Bergman in 1944, Gaslight owed as much to film noir as Victorian gothic.)

But its greatest legacy might be the term “gaslighting”, coined in the 1960s and in prolific use ever since.

Toby Schmitz and Geraldine Hakewill in Gaslight. Control masquerades as concern.Credit: Brett Boardman

The word denotes an insidious form of manipulation designed to undermine the victim’s confidence in their own perceptions, even their own sanity, and it quickly became identified as a method of patriarchal control. Women suddenly realised they’d been gaslit by men for most of history.

The problem was pervasive in the Victorian era, where a woman’s sanity was governed and defined by a paternalistic medical establishment.

This fact places Bella (Geraldine Hakewill) at the mercy of her husband Jack (Toby Schmitz), who does not have her best interests at heart.

There’s an oppressive stasis to the domestic surface. To a modern eye, this production is such intentionally unadventurous theatre – period costume, drawing room locale, Aristotelian unities – that it must deliver a compelling sense of menace to avoid looking like a museum piece.

Geraldine Hakewill (right) with the wonderfully dour Kate Fitzpatrick. Credit: Brett Boardman

Flourishes of Victorian gothic in the supporting performances – Kate Fitzpatrick’s wonderfully dour Scottish housekeeper, Courtney Cavallero’s insolent new maid – keep the audience from going stir crazy. Chemistry between the leads? Not so much.

Schmitz certainly conveys a doughy sort of entitlement and there’s a creepiness, always, to control masquerading as concern. But he can appear to be phoning it in. I would like to have seen a more dramatic distinction between benign facade and predatory intention, more responsiveness to both Bella and the audience.

Hakewill’s nervous unravelling in the first half models so-called “hysteria” – a thankless task – before the play lifts after interval, with Bella’s small act of defiance spiralling into a revelation that sees her taking charge and taking revenge.

Lee Lewis is typically such a nuanced director of actors that it’s weird to find the leads virtually dropping character on occasion.

Geraldine Hakewill and Toby Schmitz: Nervous unravelling leads to revelation.Credit: Brett Boardman Photography

A reversal in which Bella manipulates her husband to get to the truth, for instance, could have been an incredibly tense moment, performed straight. Why would you throw it away for a cheap laugh?

Perhaps it’s a maladaptive response to overstretched material. A slick 90 minutes no interval would have suited the show better, and it isn’t as flawlessly constructed as comparable commercial stage thrillers such as The Mousetrap or The Woman In Black.

Still, the performances will grow on tour. Hakewill and Schmitz are both talented actors, and should in time find a more intricate, unnerving portrayal of gendered villainy and heroism and the power struggle at the play’s core.
Reviewed by Cameron Woodhead

MUSIC
The Human League ★★★★
Palais Theatre, March 9

The hook for The Human League’s current tour is a start-to-finish rendition of Dare, the 1981 album that took the band from the obscurely avant-garde to mainstream synth-pop success.

The Human League reminded the Palais audience how Dare reshaped pop music.Credit: Martin Philbey

It’s an appealing strategy: in a world dominated by algorithms and playlists, to hear an album played in full and un-expunged of its less commercially successful songs feels like a statement of artistic integrity. Dare may be a pop album, but it is both stranger and more interesting than its singles suggest.

On an oppressively hot night in Melbourne, frontman Philip Oakey arrives on stage dressed in an austere Matrix-style trenchcoat and sleek, billowing flares, accompanied by singers Joanne Catherall and Susan Ann Sulley.

The band begins with a warm-up of pick-and-mix of hits, including (Keep Feeling) Fascination, Mirror Man and Human, before launching into the main event. Over the next 40 minutes, the audience is reminded exactly how Dare reshaped pop music – and why it remains a classic.

Susan Ann Sulley and Phil Oakey rate high for sheer fun.Credit: Martin Philby

Between the radio-friendly singles, the band showcases its more atmospheric, spare and genuinely weird tracks: from the understated Darkness, to the menacing I Am the Law, to the plaintively emotive Seconds. None of these songs are likely to pop up on a best of the ’80s playlist. All of them are a revelation live.

This being said, there is a slight disconnect between Oakley and his bandmates. Oakley approaches the show with a kind of determined professionalism, while Catherall and Sulley lean into high camp with kitsch choreographed dance sequences that occasionally wander into pantomime.

Still, no one can deny the show rates high for sheer fun. Even the soupy atmosphere inside the Palais can’t stop the crowd from boogieing when the band rolls out Don’t You Want Me, does a swift gear change with Being Boiled, and ends the night on a high with a shimmering rendition of Together in Electric Dreams.
Reviewed by Nadia Bailey

THEATRE
The 39 Steps ★★
Hearth Theatre, Chapel Off Chapel, until March 17

John Buchan’s espionage thriller The 39 Steps was staged at the MTC in 2008. Noel Coward expert Maria Aitken travelled from the UK to direct the show with meticulous comic timing, and a restraint that appeared hard-won. “The stiff upper lip,” as Aitken observed in an interview at the time, “is a difficult concept to get across to a loose-limbed country.”

Never a truer word was spoken. Restraint, alas, is in short supply in Hearth Theatre’s revival, which is chockers with amateurish flamboyance and shouty extroversion and the rumbustiousness of suburban pantomime.

The comedic hammering wears you down. It’s annoying, too, given that Sorab Kaikobad as reluctant hero Richard Hannay clearly has the potential to be a smoother, more debonair leading man than Marcus Graham was back in 2008. His talent for dry humour and matinee idol gleam are tailor-made for the part and there’s a taste of genuine drollery in his sly send-up of British valour, stoicism and reserve.

Not that we get to enjoy it fully, outside the rom-com chase sequences in which Hannay is handcuffed to love interest Pamela (Yvette Turner).

Sorab Kaikobad in The 39 StepsCredit: Cameron Grant

Two clowns (Charlie Cousins and Jackson McGovern) tackle the remaining cast of thousands, taking what should be nimble cameos and stretching them into overworked japery played broad and low. These performances have never met an outrageous accent or a rowdy, high-pitched bit of cross-dressing they didn’t like.

The problem isn’t so much the low comedy itself, as the want of discipline and technique. Tuning the clowning, physical humour, and caricature to serve theatrical purpose would have prevented moments of stolen thunder and might also have stopped the shenanigans from seeming relentlessly repetitive and over-the-top.

Charlie Cousins and Sorab Kaikobad in The 39 StepsCredit: Cameron Grant

As it stands, the law of diminishing returns kicks in fast. Hearth Theatre did produce an excellent indie revival of Death of a Salesman last year, but I suspect commercial entertainment in the vein of The 39 Steps might be more technically demanding than drama. The show certainly needs a tighter directorial hand.

Alfred Hitchcock fanatics, or devotees of his 1935 film version, may want to see it out of interest. And if you have a high tolerance for panto-style silliness, two hours of air-conditioned darkness in the middle of a heatwave is, I suppose, nothing to be sniffed at.
Reviewed by Cameron Woodhead

MUSIC
The Streets ★★★★
Margaret Court Arena, March 9

The Streets put on an amazing show tonight and it is a testament to Mike Skinner’s skills as a performer that his odd banter didn’t mar an energetic, hit-studded performance.

Kicking off with a blaring Money isn’t Everything, from the long-awaited new album The Darker the Shadow the Brighter the Light, Skinner then jumped into the bouncing GA floor crowd to serve up 2002’s Turn the Page.

As he said: “You could have been with the Jonas Brothers tonight, but you chose to be with us instead!” And we’d made the right choice.

The Streets’ Mike Skinner constantly walked among, and crowd-surfed over, his audience.Credit: Richard Clifford

I’ve seen other performers tentatively make their way into their audience, but our host constantly walked among, or crowd-surfed over his audience, making it to all points of the arena throughout the night and exhilarating his fans.

It’s a testament to the quality of tracks like Fit but You Know It and Don’t Mug Yourself that the crowd work themselves into a wild state without needing stage dancers, elaborate costumes, or any of the usual arena gig spectacle.

Skinner’s odd banter didn’t mar an energetic, hit-studded performance.Credit: Richard Clifford

After the sublime Dry Your Eyes, Skinner climbed onto the shoulders of a strong lad to tell us why he had been bizarrely, constantly talking about Keanu Reeves throughout the night: “When Keanu came to Victoria he went to Bells Beach. I didn’t come here for music, I came to surf, and all the ladies have to surf with me!”

He was trying to establish a safe place for women to crowd-surf: a noble sentiment, and there were a few takers as Take Me As I Am fired up the throng again, but the surfing soon fizzled out, ending the show on an oddly anti-climactic note.

The music and show were great, and The Streets’ intentions of making a safer dance floor were good, but I certainly never expected so much Keanu.
Reviewed by Andrew McClelland

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