This revolutionary feminist was executed at 31. Her ideas never died

THEATRE
Farewell Lady Autumn ★★
La Mama, until March 28

Set in Beijing near the end of the Qing dynasty, Farewell Lady Autumn is inspired by the life of poet, feminist, and revolutionary Qiu Jin. She did not live to see the fall of the Imperial regime – Qiu was executed at 31 after being implicated in a failed assassination plot – but her ideas proved hugely influential.

Farewell Lady Autumn is inspired by the life of poet, feminist and revolutionary Qiu Jin.Credit: Darren Gill

For Qiu (Isabelle Wang), gender revolution found an ally in the political revolutions that would soon sweep away the old order, and she felt personally the oppressive contradictions of that order for women.

Qiu was subjected to foot binding as a girl and an unhappy arranged marriage followed, yet it was her privilege – her wealth and education – that allowed her to see how deep the vein of misogyny in Chinese culture ran and to take arms against it.

Some of the male chauvinism presented in the play is so extreme it seems to repeat tragedy as farce. While teaching her maid Ping Ping (Fanny Hanusin) to read and write, for instance, Qiu combs Confucian analects and ancient texts and makes her read aloud: “One hundred women are not worth one testicle.”

Questioning such pearls of wisdom behind closed doors with her female friends, Qiu finds solidarity between women, in the form of sworn sisterhood with doctor and fellow poet Madam Wu (Lansy Feng), and also finds the courage to publish her opinions, essays and poems.

Isabelle Wang playing the guzheng is a transporting moment.Credit: Darren Gill

She dresses as a man, too, to gain admittance to meetings organised by a charismatic revolutionary (Jamie Vu), though the play mostly focuses on her relationship with female intimates, using one of Qiu’s autumnal poems to suggest her fate.

Farewell Lady Autumn is a lively enough period drama with plenty of sly feminist humour, although sound design and projections were defeated by a tech issue at the performance I attended. That’s a pity – Wang playing the guzheng (Chinese zither) is a transporting moment, and the lack of sound otherwise does accentuate the dull conventionality of the play’s structure and dialogue.

Investing the text with more poetic logic, musical abstraction, and wordless emotion might have ameliorated the relentlessness of witnessing so many short chronological scenes play out.

Even so, the performances are nerveless, and Wang brings sharp intellect and charm to her portrayal of this important standard-bearer in the struggle for gender equality in China.
Reviewed by Cameron Woodhead

MUSIC
Lainey Wilson ★★★★
Margaret Court Arena, March 20

Lainey Wilson performing at Margaret Court Arena on March 20.Credit: Richard Clifford

“Y’all ready to have a dang good time tonight?” Lainey Wilson is a dyed-in-the-denim country show-woman. She plays to the crowd, hard – stalking the stage in fringed flares and a big hat, shufflin’, swingin’, kickin’ off the show with a shoey in a cowboy boot.

“We call it a holler an’ a swaller,” she says, downing the beer to uproarious applause. Hot off headlining CMC Rocks festival, the award-winning Louisiana singer brings a slick, charismatic performance and vocal maturity. She exudes power and confidence, a natural storyteller drawlin’ between songs, as the grasping hands of girls and women pass hats and cowboy boots for her to sign on stage.

Wilson is hillbilly hippie: honky tonk and disco balls, platform shoes and fringed vest, a Nord keyboard, a finger-blistering solo from her guitarist that wouldn’t have been out of place at Woodstock, exhortations to pray to God, and a guest duet with a barefoot Nic Cester of Jet.

It’s retro rock ‘n’ roll meets contemporary cowboy. As her new single states, country’s cool again.

Lainey Wilson performs a duet with Nic Cester of Jet. Credit: Richard Clifford

Wilson slings us typical country songs, Heart Like a Truck and Grease (“It’s been a long, hot summer / For a hard-working John Deere man”), but they’re predominantly women’s stories: Hardy’s Wait in the Truck, about domestic violence, the hopeful Atta Girl, starry-eyed Watermelon Moonshine, and an a cappella version of Deana Carter’s Strawberry Wine, then Kristin Chenoweth’s What Would Dolly Do? and Wilson’s own smash hit, Things a Man Outta Know.

Even the rollicking gallop of Wildflowers and Wild Horses is cowboy romanticism with feminine power: “I’m four-fifths of reckless and one-fifth of Jack / I push like a daisy through old sidewalk cracks.”

It might feel contrived or over-polished in parts, but it’s part of the theatre. If Taylor Swift had gone hard country and stayed there, this could’ve been the tour.
Reviewed by Kosa Monteith

MUSIC
Callum Mintzis: And the Wind Was My Dear Friend, Once Again ★★★★
Norla Dome, Mission to Seafarers, March 22

For his album launch, Callum Mintzis created a multimedia presentation of the work for string quartet and electronics, accompanied by a dancer and visual projections.Credit: Roger Mitchell

When Callum Mintzis was a child, he believed he could talk to the wind. The title of his evocative new album (And the Wind Was My Dear Friend, Once Again) references this belief, and relates to his adult recognition of the value of openness – to the natural world, to our own internal world and to one another.

As a composer, Mintzis is driven by the disconnection and dislocation he sees around him, and his yearning for something different. Not surprisingly, the music on And the Wind… is permeated with a sense of sorrow, despite its ethereal beauty.

For the album launch, Mintzis created a multimedia presentation of the work for string quartet and electronics, accompanied by a dancer and visual projections. The unique venue – Norla Dome, in the historic Docklands Mission to Seafarers – produced a feeling of both intimacy and expansion. The resonant acoustics allowed the sound of swelling strings to float upwards and outwards, while Carla Zimbler’s celestial projections on the dome’s curved ceiling encouraged us to drift into outer space or inner reflection.

Dancer MaggZ’s hypnotic movements were both eloquent and emotionally ambiguous.Credit: Roger Mitchell

Tilman Robinson’s electronics subtly manipulated the sound of the strings, deepening their vibrations, amplifying their quivering harmonics or layering them with samples and sonic effects. At times, they also mingled with the sounds of traffic from the street, blurring the boundaries between the interior and exterior world.

Dancer MaggZ’s hypnotic movements were both eloquent and emotionally ambiguous. Just as the music moved between consonance and dissonance, shadows and light, MaggZ’s gestures could be supple or staccato, fluid or fractured. A curled-up body on the floor might be in repose or withdrawal – an outstretched arm, suddenly retracted, suggested both fear and desire.

All three elements – music, dance, visuals – combined to produce an experience that was as poetic as it was poignant.

As the piece concluded and Mintzis was enveloped by the audience’s warm applause, it struck me that his music and energy had brought us together and provided an example of what can happen when we listen intently – to the world around us, and to ourselves.
Reviewed by Jessica Nicholas

MUSIC
Ryman Healthcare Season Opening Gala: Jaime Conducts The Planets ★★★★★
Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Hamer Hall, March 21

Deborah Cheetham Fraillon debuts Earth with the MSO.Credit: Laura Manariti

The Melbourne Symphony Orchestra under chief conductor Jaime Martin gave its second five-star performance in a week, following Mahler 3 in mid-March, with an extraordinary rendition of Gustav Holst’s suite The Planets.

It was sumptuous: by turns thrilling, powerful, snarling and tender, with striking attention to detail by all involved – the work of a virtuoso orchestra and a conductor perfectly attuned in one of the repertoire’s great showpieces.

The mostly English program opened with Elgar’s ravishing cello concerto, given a restrained and poetic yet virile account by German soloist Alban Gerhardt while Martin gave notice of what was to come with a sensitive accompaniment in which all sorts of often-unheard details emerged organically.

The Gala was by turns thrilling, powerful, snarling and tender, with striking attention to detail by all involved.Credit: Laura Manariti

Next came the world premiere of Earth by MSO composer-in-residence Deborah Cheetham Fraillon. This was a clever piece of programming as Earth is the one planet missing from Holst’s aural solar system (plus Pluto, which had yet to be discovered).

Cheetham Fraillon’s attractive piece opened dramatically with intense percussion and blaring brass, before moving to more lyrical passages with lush strings, with the composer in fine voice in the solo part. She showed an affinity with Holst’s sound world plus some Richard Strauss influences, without sounding at all derivative.

Holst’s Planets are less astronomical and more astrological, with each planet described in its supposed relation to humanity. The finest moments were the two best-known movements – a martial Mars and a majestic Jupiter – plus a wonderfully ethereal and mysterious Neptune. The Upper Voices of the MSO Chorus sang this movement from high on the balcony rather than off-stage, allowing extra clarity and control, fading into silence perfectly.

The one disappointment – and it was major – was the disgraceful excuse for an organ, which had no discernible impact. The Arts Centre removed the Hamer Hall organ more than a decade ago and simply refuses to replace it, despite pleading from musicians and an obvious need.
Reviewed by Barney Zwartz

THEATRE
Dissent ★★
Arts House, until March 24

Daley Rangi makes a dream Game Master: witty, eloquent, with an easy charisma and an endless supply of nerdy in-jokes.Credit: Sarah Walker

When I first played Dungeons & Dragons in the 1980s, role-playing games were so mysteriously uncool that they attracted conspiracy theories. Wild rumours circulated that D&D was a cover for a satanic cult. It was worse than that, of course. For many, role-playing was a road to the performing arts.

Moral panics and tin-foil-hat-wearers haven’t gone away since then (indeed, the internet has given a global soapbox to conspiracies such as QAnon), but the nerds are totally slaying it in the battle to win over mainstream culture.

It’s no surprise to find RPGs probing the porous border between games and art. These games are inherently theatrical – the Game Master may be likened to a writer/director, the players actors – and they offer, within a structure of improvised collaborative storytelling, what is essentially a style of participatory performance.

Dissent at Art House brings gaming and theatre together. Credit: Sarah Walker

Daley Rangi’s Dissent uses tabletop role-playing to gamify everyday life. Audience members are randomly selected to play the game, while the rest of us watch.

Their characters are also randomly chosen: on opening night, we got a tattoo artist, a janitor and a social worker, all walking the streets of North Melbourne, represented on a table-sized map.

As they go about their business, the characters encounter and must respond to emergent situations – from witnessing criminal activity to seeing a child crying in the street – that demand moral choices.

Watching people role-playing live is more interesting than it sounds. It’s more popular, too, if the success of YouTube and Twitch streams such as Critical Role (which features a cast of voice actors playing D&D) is any guide.

Certainly, Rangi makes a dream Game Master: witty, eloquent, with an easy charisma and an endless supply of nerdy in-jokes.

For their part, the players provided an eminently watchable blend of amusing improv and ingenious problem-solving, although the narrative didn’t connect them, and perhaps more pointed and detailed scenarios might have made Dissent a more satisfying ethical puzzle box.

As it is, the piece devolves into rather too idealistic a love-in, inviting the audience into groups to try to solve the world’s problems. It felt more like a leadership training course or a stray session at a theatre conference than art.

Still, Rangi’s presence suffuses the evening with camaraderie and rare warmth, and the tabletop gaming community should enjoy this intriguing experiment.
Reviewed by Cameron Woodhead

COMEDY
Melbourne International Comedy Festival Gala ★★★★

Palais Theatre, March 20

Celia Pacquola in red-hot form at the 2024 Melbourne International Comedy Festival Gala.Credit: Nick Robertson

A call-up to perform five minutes at the biggest night on the Australian comedy calendar is any comic’s dream. It’s also their worst nightmare – simultaneously exhilarating and horrifying.

If you slay the 3000-plus-seat theatre, you can essentially start looking at booking in extra performances in the last week of the festival. If you bomb, you’re in for a gruelling 3.5-week slog of ego-crushing, blatant self-promotion and half-empty rooms. Word of mouth is both a blessing and a curse.

As this year’s incarnation? There were a few from both columns, compered by a somewhat underwhelming Lizzy Hoo, whose material was never quite able to ignite the room.

Lizzy Hoo hosted the evening.Credit: Nick Robertson

Celia Pacquola began in red-hot form discussing pregnancy, meeting the love of her life via the internet and mistaking the Irish for Italians; Nath Valvo found a fiscal way to admit his love for Boomers and the nightmarish logistics of leaving a Beyonce concert; while Fern Brady scorched the earth with anecdotes about the misaligned confidence of Americans.

Former Deadly Funny winner Janty Blair spoke about the troubles of lying about your age on dating apps (and matching with her son); Daniel Connell’s dry quips about bookstore pranks were delivered with aplomb; Tommy Little declared his desire to remove speed limits in school zones and shared recollections of staying in an Airbnb church; and Australia’s pre-eminent provocateur of left-wing Millennials, Tom Ballard, shied away from the Liberal-bashing that got his last appearance at the Gala entirely wiped from the broadcast – recounting the US Embassy trying to explain Australian slang and a section centred on Ben Roberts-Smith.

As expected in such a colossal offering, there were a few lowlights. Kirsty Webeck, Nazeem Hussain, Lewis Garnham and Takashi Wakasugi were all received ho-hum. Musical acts failed to shine, with Cameron James, Reuben Kaye and Gillian Cosgriff all gathering middling responses while competing with sub-par acoustics.

New Zealander Ray O’Leary took home MVP honours, with a drawling, deadpan routine about nothing but mattress protectors. I won’t even try to explain – you’ll have to watch the broadcast.

But no doubt the highlight of the evening was a tribute to the late, great Cal Wilson, with a montage of her career at the festival, which featured 13 appearances at previous Galas, alongside numerous outings at The Great Debate, Comedy Up Late and the MICF Roadshow alongside her contributions on the board of the Festival. Vale.
Reviewed by Tyson Wray

The Melbourne International Comedy Festival is on from Wednesday, March 27 to Sunday, April 21. The Age is a festival media partner. The Gala airs on ABC TV and ABC iview on Wednesday, March 27.

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