It might be a tale as old as time, but this musical is pure delight

MUSICAL
Beauty and the Beast ★★★★
Music: Alan Menken, Lyrics: Howard Ashman & Tim Rice, Book: Linda Woolverton, Disney Theatrical
Her Majesty’s Theatre, from June 29

Disney’s Beauty and the Beast claims to be a tale as old as time, but it stands the test of time because it did something new.

This musical hits the sweet spot with visual spectacle.Credit: Daniel Boud

Along with The Little Mermaid and Aladdin, the film helped to usher in a fresh generation of animated Disney classics in the 1980s and ’90s – the so-called Disney Renaissance – and its success owed as much to feminist subversion as it did to big Broadway show tunes or advances in animation technology.

The original crop of Disney princesses? Hardly paragons of women’s empowerment. Snow White and Cinderella are blatant fantasies of feminine submission – attracting and marrying a prince charming is their raison d’être and they’re stripped of agency to achieve that purpose.

Belle (Shubshri Kandiah) is cut from a different cloth – an imaginative, bookish young woman with a mind of her own. Passive acceptance of a “prince charming” was never going to happen, not least because the hunter Gaston (Rubin Matters) is a puffed-up poster boy for patriarchal values who wouldn’t be out of place in The Handmaid’s Tale. His “charm” is the superficial lure of a narcissist.

Meanwhile, the Beast (Brendan Xavier) has been cursed for selfishness. Either he learns to rewire the power dynamics of romance into something both lovers choose freely, or he remains a monster for life.

Musical theatre lovers who have fond memories of seeing Beauty and the Beast as kids will find them refreshed in this production.Credit: Daniel Boud

The musical is pure delight. It’s a much smoother and more entertaining adaptation than Frozen and hits the sweet spot with visual spectacle. There are no flying carpets like the Aladdin musical. Atmospheric shadow-play, projections and stage illusion bring the enchanted castle to life, without overpowering the performances.

And they are genuinely charming. There’s a lightness, a warmth to the romantasy kindled by Kandiah and Xavier, and their acting is matched by vocal crispness and power. And Matters provides them with a charismatic antagonist in Gaston.

It wouldn’t be Beauty and the Beast without castle staff (Rohan Browne, Gareth Jacobs, Jayde Westaby and others) whom the curse has magically transformed into items of dinnerware and furniture and decor.

Their attempts at matchmaking turn into elaborate showstoppers, full of high-kicks and chorus lines and tap-dancing and lightning costume changes, and everything you love about big-budget Broadway musicals.

There’s a lightness, a warmth to the romantasy Shubshri Kandiah and Brendan Xavier kindle.Credit: Daniel Boud

Musical theatre lovers who have fond memories of seeing Beauty and the Beast as kids will find them refreshed in this production and, having taken a 12-year-old along, it’s fair to say today’s children should be just as enthralled by its stage magic.

Reviewed by Cameron Woodhead

MUSIC
Satu Vanska and Konstantin Shamray ★★★★
Melbourne Recital Centre, June 28

An unusual amalgam of works did not inhibit violinist Satu Vanska and pianist Konstantin Shamray from mining a rich vein of musical partnership in the latest offering from the Melbourne Recital Centre’s intimate salon.

Violinist Satu Vanska.Credit: Daniel Boud

A selection of scores honouring Vanska’s Finnish heritage began with Aulis Sallinen’s Cadenza for Solo Violin, Op. 13. Written by the Finnish modernist for a competition in 1965, the work began quietly and evocatively before providing ample opportunity for Vanska to mix poetry successfully with pyrotechnics.

Several contrasting Sibelius miniatures, including the boisterous Danses champetres and the slow-waltz Berceuse were full of poignant phrasing and sonorous characterisation, amidst the obligatory period flourishes. Vanska also sang the traditional Finnish song There Is My Sweetheart in an atmospheric arrangement.

These musical morsels were followed by a substantial main course in the form of Beethoven’s Sonata No. 8 for Violin and Piano, Op. 30, No. 3. Sometimes referred to as the “Champagne Sonata”, its nickname raises expectations of lightness and effervescence when the outer movements of this work demand rapid-fire artistic reflexes and the keyboard part is among the most challenging in this repertoire.

Even so, the two players set metaphorical corks flying and bubbles flowing. The first movement may have benefited from a slightly more relaxed tempo, enabling a little more time for the music’s rhetorical flourishes to register, but the middle-movement minuet with its off-beat accents and the vivacious finale hit their mark.

Unexpected highlights came at the end of the program by way of a brilliant encore that offered four of Shostakovich’s Preludes (originally conceived for solo piano) in arrangements for violin and piano by Dmitri Zyganov, longtime first violinist of the Beethoven Quartet who had worked closely with the composer. Here both artists brought forth musical gold from music that should be far better known.

Reviewed by Tony Way

THEATRE
Recollection ★★★
45downstairs, until July 7

At first, Georgia Ketels’ debut play Recollection appears to flirt with “dead lesbian syndrome” – a well-documented trope that kills off fictional same-sex attracted characters, especially on film or TV.

The syndrome itself describes a complex phenomenon. Yes, killing off queer characters reinforced social opprobrium – death was often read as a comeuppance for so-called deviant desires – but it could also function as a strategy of resistance, allowing mainstream queer representation despite the homophobic attitudes deeply entrenched in official culture.

Mish Keating as Jenna and Molly Holohan as Molly in Recollection.Credit: Shane Palmer

Recollection largely sidesteps the history there, though audiences will be aware of it, and the knowledge provokes discomfort as we encounter the sudden death of a closeted lesbian teen, Molly (Molly Holohan).

Switching between Molly’s final months and the aftermath of her death, we follow her desolated mother Olivia (Eve Morey) as she delivers Molly’s personal possessions to a perfumier (Ravenna Bouckaert) to reconstruct her daughter’s scent.

Woven in is a delicate portrayal of the tentative teen romance between Molly and her secret girlfriend Jenna (Mish Keating). Olivia thought they were just friends, and didn’t like Jenna, whose socio-economic disadvantage and precarious living situation triggered the bourgeois helicopter parent in her. Love and grief will eventually unite them.

Eve Morey as Olivia in Recollection.Credit: Shane Palmer

As it happens, Molly’s sexual orientation is a McGuffin. Lesbians can fall victim to random, real-life tragedy that refuses to obey the laws of narrative and dramatic art, just like every other human.

Representing that sort of misfortune faithfully using narrative or dramatic art is challenging, of course, and the play does ultimately take refuge in sentimental melodrama, but not before Holohan and Keating win all hearts with a tender, funny and achingly vulnerable portrayal of first love.

Olivia’s arc is less compelling. The action is at its most theatrical when it equivocates and leaves room for interpretation, rather than beating you over the head with predictable emotion.

One scene in which Olivia ransacks her daughter’s bedroom and finds a sex toy is arresting because you’re unsure whether Molly is still alive or not – is it an invasion of privacy or a desperate attempt to be close to a lost child?

That implicates the audience in a way Olivia’s whimsical perfume quest doesn’t. (Maybe signposting it as magical realism and employing a heightened, overtly satirical style – as if Olivia were visiting a psychic or something – might have worked better.) Still, this production features two talented younger performers to watch, and it’s a promising start for a playwright learning the ropes.

Reviewed by Cameron Woodhead

THEATRE
Unestablished ★★
La Mama, until June 30

Structural racism and sexism in the theatre world inform Yogashree Thirunavukarasu’s debut play Unestablished. Activism in these areas has been ongoing for decades, and equity and diversity considerations are now prominently baked into the system of arts bureaucracy, even as funding for theatre artists has fallen in real terms almost across the board.

Structural racism and sexism in the theatre world inform Yogashree Thirunavukarasu’s debut play Unestablished.Credit: Darren Gill

One doesn’t need reminding of the grotesque gender inequity of mainstream theatre programming in the 2000s, or the sheer whiteness that prevailed, especially in naturalistic drama, before widespread advocacy for adopting what was then called “colourblind” casting.

Our theatre culture has changed since then, so why are the artistic directors of mainstream theatre companies still overwhelmingly white? It’s a question Thirunavukarasu throws into sharp focus as she explores the dilemmas of an ambitious, culturally and linguistically diverse queer theatre director, Archana, who lands a dream gig directing at the (fictional) Established Theatre Company.

The dream becomes an ethical nightmare when Archana catches the company’s middle-aged artistic director (Doug Lyons) – a sleaze with an impossibly Eurocentric frame of cultural reference – sexually harassing an intern.

Her girlfriend (Lucy Payne) writes a play that eerily resembles the incident and Archana must direct it, drawing out the perpetrator’s guilt. But she resents doing the right thing so badly it dooms her relationship: the damage to Archana’s career could be irreparable, after all, and she has had to work extra hard to succeed.

One of the most striking sequences in Unestablished contrasts the internal monologues of two intimate partners.Credit: Darren Gill

Meanwhile, Archana’s best friend, the flamboyantly gay sex worker Jimi (Vasi Samudra Devi), faces overt racial prejudice in the private realm of sexual attraction and fantasy.

Various implausibilities do affect suspension of disbelief in the central plot of Unestablished, although dramaturgically it’s a searching piece that rejects naturalism as sufficient to convey the minutiae of marginalised experience.

One of the most striking sequences contrasts the internal monologues of two intimate partners, and is performed with sharp tragicomic insight into relationship breakdown. Other formal experimentation verging on protest theatre falls short.

Abbreviating the narrative to minimise unconvincing aspects of plot and character and expanding critique wouldn’t hurt, and perhaps a more comprehensive elision of art and activism may be required to break fresh ground on a theme that’s producing some of our most daring contemporary theatre.

Reviewed by Cameron Woodhead

The above review was written from a preview performance.

MUSIC
Altstaedt Plays Haydn and Tchaikovsky ★★★★★
Australian Chamber Orchestra, Hamer Hall, June 23

Guest-leading the Australian Chamber Orchestra, German-French cellist Nicolas Altstaedt juxtaposed older and newer works in a program that was as thoughtfully conceived as it was enthusiastically executed.

Cellist Nicolas Altstaedt performs with the Australian Chamber Orchestra on Sunday.Credit: Nic Walker

Sandwiched between the dramatic introduction and final earthquake of Haydn’s The Seven Last Words of Christ came three short utterances from Hungarian composer Gyorgy Kurtag’s Officium breve in memoriam Andrae Szervanszky. Although composed two centuries apart, both works had elements of devotion and drama that spoke eloquently one to the other, underlined by the players’ nuanced attention to rhythm and sonority.

By way of contrast came all the sweetness and light of Tchaikovsky’s justly popular Variations on a Rococo Theme, Op. 33. Moving from sitting with the other cellos to the soloist’s central position, Altstaedt displayed equal measures of rapture and fearlessness in navigating the variations’ demanding technical terrain, particularly in his stratospheric harmonics and rapid-fire delivery. Moments of repose were marked by a rich, sweet timbre from Altstaedt’s 1749 Guadagnini instrument.

Sandor Veress’ Four Transylvanian Dances (where folkloric elements are successfully refracted through a modernist lens) provided listeners another opportunity to experience Altstaedt’s happy rapport with principal violin Helena Rathbone and principal viola Stefanie Farrands.

Altstaedt’s genius for unusual programming saw the startling but effective coupling of Aroura by Greek avant-garde composer Iannis Xenakis with Haydn’s feel-good Cello Concerto in C. Instead of exploiting Xenakis’ “barbed wire” music for shock value, but plumbing its raw, emotional depths, the Haydn seemed all the more refreshing as a result.

Acknowledging historically informed practice, Altstaedt, dispensing with an endpin and using a period bow, gave a delightfully zesty account of the concerto, backed up by the ACO’s customary disciplined yet joyful playing.

Full of congeniality and collegiality, this concert was collaborative music-making at its best, backed up by seasoned professional experience and innovative programming.
Reviewed by Tony Way

JAZZ
Gian Slater and Barney McAll: Uncover ★★★★
The Jazzlab, June 24

Gian Slater and Barney McAll are both unique musical stylists with a very personal, distinctive sound. As artists, they have each honed their creative approach over many years, focusing on original compositions that reflect and enhance their musical identities.

Gian Slater’s exquisite voice harnessed the poetry and eloquence of each lyric.Credit: Madeline Bishop

It’s rare to hear either of them performing jazz standards – which is why their latest project is so intriguing. As the name “Uncover” suggests, their aim with this band is to unearth, or uncover, lesser-known standards from decades past. It’s a cover band that plays covers of tunes you’ve never heard of.

At Jazzlab on Monday night, the pair introduced us to songs from obscure musicals and half-forgotten films, and delved into the back catalogues of some of their favourite jazz singers and composers. Their aim was not to twist these songs into boldly contemporary shapes, but to highlight their beauty and make you wonder why they’re not better known.

Slater and McAll are both technically brilliant musicians, but in this setting the emphasis was on subtlety and understatement. Slater’s exquisite voice harnessed the poetry and eloquence of each lyric, alighting on words and phrases with effortless grace and clarity. Her scatting allowed her to dart and glide expressively, without diluting the emotional essence of each tune.

Pianist Barney McAll shepherded the melodies and harmonies with deep sensitivity and restraint.Credit: Jenn Gavito

Likewise, at the piano, McAll eschewed any hint of flashiness, carefully shepherding the melodies and harmonies with deep sensitivity and restraint. Bassist Ben Hanlon and drummer Danny Fischer were also marvellously subtle in their accompaniment, shorn of any unnecessary embellishment. Most pieces were pinned to slow or unhurried tempos, though one song (By Myself) had the band conjure a more dynamic mood, propelled by McAll’s plunging chords and exuberant soloing.

The concert closed with an intimate duet by Slater and McAll, underlining the profound rapport between these two remarkable artists with a shared love of neglected musical treasures.
Reviewed by Jessica Nicholas

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