Australian Ballet’s Carmen misses heights of dark passion

DANCE
Carmen ★★★
The Australian Ballet, Regent Theatre, until March 18

Despite a tidy ensemble showing by The Australian Ballet, this austere contemporary dance interpretation of Prosper Merimee’s lurid tale of desire, jealousy and murder never rises to any great heights. Ideas and innovations abound, but they just don’t mesh.

Jill Ogai starred in the Australian Ballet’s performance of Carmen. Credit: Joe Armao

Swedish choreographer Johan Inger created this version for a Spanish dance company in 2015, using Rodion Shchedrin’s wonderfully dark and muscular Carmen Suite, a rearrangement of music from Bizet’s opera. It was his first go at an evening-length narrative dance.

The choreographic language is distinctive, characterised by tense cliches, abundant literal gestures, lots of running on the spot and frequent low crouches with bent arms thrust out at odd angles. It produces some striking passages, but it also suggests some confusing imagery.

In particular, the dancers often resemble crabs or insects, skirmishing and colliding, jostling and grasping. They scuttle sideways, clambering onto one another as they fight and make love, then split themselves open with flexed chests and deep backbends.

The production is laden with such oddities. A child – performed on opening night by Lilla Harvey – watches the action, sometimes intervenes and is inevitably shattered by the conclusion. And there are gangster-like figures in black, representing death or fate, who swarm the stage or roll across it.

The Australian Ballet’s performance of Carmen drew on the work of choreographer Johan Inger.Credit: Joe Armao

Carmen, danced by Jill Ogai, is engaging but more closed and held back than one might expect. She is wild but not extravagantly wild. And this is perhaps consistent with the kind of story Inger struggles to tell: a terrible but ordinary story of intimate partner violence.

And yet, as in recent Australian Ballet productions of Oscar and Nijinsky, the female characters in Carmen do tend to disappear into the margins. Indeed, in the second act, set in a kind of limbo populated by tumbling dead souls, they are literally snatched from the stage.

The male leads on opening night – Callum Linnane, Marcus Morelli and Brett Chynoweth – are similarly restrained. The machismo is gestural rather than substantive. They’re not so visceral and intense as they might be. The anguish is plausible but not the brutality.

Of course, the choreography, alien and disjointed as it is, doesn’t give them much to work with. There are, however, a few spine-tingling moments. The pas de deux between Ogai and Linnane just before Don José kills his rival in love is terrific.

Perhaps the most disappointing element of this production is the sound design, with poor-quality canned music jammed between selections from Shchedrin. The pre-recorded stuff is utterly callow and the live orchestra feels underpowered and rather too smooth.

The scenic design, featuring large monolithic set pieces that glide silently like tombstones on castors, provides a coherent visual that transforms effectively into a haunted netherworld. It’s one of the few really effective elements of this staging.

And yet, it’s a weirdly hollow sort of production. Whatever worthy intentions Inger brought to this project, it was still unsettling to applaud the staged murder of a woman by her ex-partner – on the night before International Women’s Day, no less.
Reviewed by Andrew Fuhrman

MUSIC
Ice Cube ★★★★
Sidney Myer Music Bowl, March 9

At the bowl, the crowd is sweaty and manic. It’s a Sunday night, 31 degrees, with threat of a thunderstorm on the horizon. White guys are throwing gang signs. Two prepubescent boys lean over the fence and try to convince me to give them my wristband. A middle-aged man takes his shirt off and screams “Ice Cube” in the broadest Australian accent I’ve ever heard (“Oooiiiis keeeewb”).

Ice Cube performs at Sidney Myer Music Bowl on March 9, 2025.Credit: Richard Clifford

Cube, one of the icons of the golden age of west coast gangsta rap, takes to the stage at 9pm. He descends a staircase alongside hype-man and Westside Connection bandmate WC, surrounded by huge screens showing plumes of smoke, wads of money, rows of palm trees, and clips from his film Friday. There are also two huge inflatable hands, their fingers folded into the “westside” sign.

At the start, the mix is so bad that the lyrics – which terrified suburban parents all through the ’90s – are barely audible. It’s fixed (sort of) by the time we hit Bop Gun and Check Yo Self (in a remix mashed up with Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five’s The Message): they’re wild and cartoonishly controversial, with all their boasts about murder, money, sex, and weed, but it’s the delivery that holds the real threat. At its best, it’s a powerful barrage, a pummelling.

That wild vitriol has hollowed a bit over the decades though. On recent single So Sensitive he rails against pronouns, Karens and how you can’t say anything these days, making him sound like the sensitive one (though the line “Don’t be a pussy all your life, be a dick sometimes” made me laugh).

Natural Born Killaz (“I’m an unforgiving, psycho-driven murderer”), You Know How We Do It (“You don’t want to see a G break yo’ ass like dishes”), and Wicked (with a lamentable “Aussie Aussie Aussie” chant thrown in) all keep the early ’90s mood going, but things really pick up when he gives us a suite of songs from his time in NWA. Dope Man, Straight Outta Compton, and Gangsta Gangsta are electric and F--- Tha Police is massive.

The wild vitriol of Ice Cube’s lyrics has hollowed a bit over the decades.Credit: Richard Clifford

Then, a surprise: Cube invites an audience member up. He’s about eight years old, cute as hell, and he wants to do Straight Outta Compton. I run through the words in my head and realise that in less than 30 seconds, this white child will say the n-word in front of Ice Cube and 10,000 fans. He says it, and lives. A relief.

After the perfect It Was A Good Day, Cube returns for an encore of It’s My Ego from his new album Man Down, and the crowd is sprayed with snow-like foam. 31 degrees and it’s snowing, and the rapping child is going to be okay. It was a good day.
Reviewed by Will Cox

MUSIC
Kneecap ★★★
170 Russell, March 10

DJ Próvaí’s Irish flag balaclava must have seemed like a stroke of genius back in Belfast. Here in the sweat-slick oven of a packed Melbourne dungeon at the sticky end of summer, maybe not so much. But resistance and endurance are pillars of Kneecap’s mission. The cheeky-sinister head cosy stays put.

Kneecap perform at 170 Russell on March 10, 2025.Credit: Richard Clifford

A projected balaclava motif is practically burned into our retinas from the off, as headlines about the Irish-language rap trio’s unlikely conquest flash through its eyeholes on the screen behind them. Its Been Ages [sic] is a triumphant song of resilience: they’re “back to annoy ’em c---s that hate us,” Móglaí Bap raps.

“Ages” equals around seven years since Bap and his co-rapper school buddy Mo Chara joined Provai to record C.E.A.R.T.A (it’s Irish for RIGHTS). They promptly got banned from Irish radio and denounced by random talking heads, sealing their notorious legend.

Much of the song, and most of their set, is in the oppressed language in question: an act of resistance to British colonial tyranny that makes the band itself a profoundly political act.

That crucial detail aside, Kneecap’s revolution is mostly powered by nothing more scandalous than youthful hedonism and ratbaggery. Amach Anocht is shouted entirely in a language nobody here understands, but the opening line apparently translates to: “out tonight and I can’t f---I g wait”.

They may be Catholic to the bone, but MDMA, cocaine, booze and spliff are their sacraments and giving the Garda the finger is their sacred vocation. “Your sniffer dogs are shite! Your sniffer dogs are shite!” we shout in belligerent unison as another tale of Saturday night rebellion unfolds.

The Palestinian and Australian Indigenous causes are woven into the righteous fury early on by support act Miss Kaninna, a fierce First Nations newcomer from Bruny Island whose magnetism, conviction and intensity rivals the headliners.

Flags continue to be waved, slogans are chanted, the Brits are furiously booed on cue and most weirdly, the ongoing non-aliveness of Margaret Thatcher is raucously celebrated. When commanded, smaller people straddle larger people’s shoulders in shocking defiance of OHS regulations to spell out RIGHTS at the top of their lungs. In Irish.

At last, as the hyperactive silhouettes of Bap and Chara skip off and the house lights rise, Próvaí stalks the lip of the stage to remove his dripping balaclava and grab a parting photo of the seething Melbourne resistance for the folks back home. It feels like liberty at last.
Reviewed by Michael Dwyer

MUSIC
New Order ★★★★
Sidney Myer Music Bowl, March 8

The last time New Order toured Australia was March 2020, a visit cut short by the COVID restrictions that kicked in the day after they played the Sidney Myer Music Bowl. Almost five years later, they’re back in the same venue, and determined to have, and to give, a Fine Time.

If New Order have a mantra, it’s f--- politics, let’s dance.Credit: Martin Philbey

That track doesn’t make the 19-song set list, but with so many bonafide bangers something had to give. Unfortunately, for the first few songs, it’s the mix.

Everyone’s come to hear some great indie pop, but what they get is crackle and snap: electrical static makes a total mess of opener Transmission (one of five Joy Division songs to get an airing), while frontman Bernard Sumner’s voice – never the most forceful of instruments – is completely buried throughout Crystal, Ceremony, Age of Consent and Isolation.

New Order frontman Bernard Sumner, with guitarist Phil Cunningham in the background, at the Sidney Myer Music Bowl on Saturday.Credit: Martin Philbey

At one point, the crowd is so frustrated that they boo – not the band, but the mix. We’re six songs in before the techs finally crack the code.

Despite the flaws, the playing has been good, the light show and video backdrops stunning (even if the opening montage of high-board divers does appear to borrow from Leni Riefenstahl’s Olympia, a curiously provocative nod to the accusations of crypto-fascism that plagued Joy Division and New Order in their early days).

By the time they play Your Silent Face, from the monster 1983 album Power, Corruption and Lies, everything clicks perfectly into place: Sumner’s melodica, guitar and vocals; the visuals of Los Angeles, a Qantas jet, the band members’ names (original trio Sumner, Stephen Morris on drums and Gillian Gilbert on synth, with Tom Chapman on bass and Phil Cunningham on guitar); the song a cusp moment in the band’s transition from gloomy industrial rock towards clubland reinvention.

State of the Nation is next, and at the halfway point of the show we’re in proper party mode. Sumner makes some claim for the track as a statement song – “Slava Ukraini” (glory to Ukraine) flashes up on the screen, and the softly spoken singer mutters something about “Donald f---ing Trump” at the end. But really, world events has never been what New Order are about.

If they have a mantra, it’s f--- politics, let’s dance. And in the second half of the show, that’s pretty much what people do. Be a Rebel (their most recent track, from 2020), Sub-Culture, Bizarre Love Triangle, Plastic all keep the tempo up, before the obligatory – and obligatorily reworked – Blue Monday brings the biggest cheer of the night.

The set finishes with a fantastic rendition of Temptation, and its refrain of “tonight I think I’ll walk alone, I’ll find my soul as I go home” lands as a benediction to take into the night.

When they come back for the encore, it’s with two Joy Division songs, Atmosphere and Love Will Tear Us Apart, both of which serve as tributes to Ian Curtis. It makes for a moving, fitting, and strangely uplifting finale.

It’s a curious side note that on the other side of the world right now, the band’s former bassist is touring as Peter Hook and The Light, playing many of the same songs. Hook’s bass lines are so integral to the sound of both acts (for the record, Chapman renders them perfectly) that for my money he has every right to stake his own claim on this legacy.

The acrimony between the former bandmates is sad. But if it means the world has twice as many opportunities to hear this incredible catalogue performed live, at least there’s some upside for fans.
Reviewed by Karl Quinn

PERFORMANCE ART | ASIA TOPA
Fire Drill Scenario ★★★
Arts House, North Melbourne, until March 9

Yes, this show really is a fire drill. The whole experience takes about an hour – if you include all the preliminaries – but, make no mistake, you will be participating in an actual drill.

There’s no twist. No surprising metatheatrical hijinks. No unexpected transformation. We get exactly what the show publicity promises: a run-through of the venue’s evacuation procedure.

Geumhyung Jeong in Fire Drill Scenario at Arts House as part of Asia TOPA.Credit: Gregory Lorenzutti

South Korean choreographer and artist Geumhyung Jeong is our compliance officer. She presents us with the floor plan, identifies the exits and demonstrates the paths of egress. It goes on and on – and then we get the drill.

So, what’s really happening? Why book tickets for a fire drill? Surely it’s satire? Well, yes, but the humour is so dry it might have passed through a molecular sieve.

The point, of course, is to encourage the audience to reflect on the idea of safety and whether the arts are just a small department in the larger cultural edifice of risk avoidance.

But it’s very deadpan. The only moment of real parody is during a demonstration of fire safety products, which includes a special fireproof basket for lowering pets from burning buildings.

Otherwise, Jeong remains machine-like and emotionally neutral throughout. She withholds
her personality while still projecting a kind of weird automaton charisma.

To underline her detachment, she has placed a number of homemade robots on display in the centre of the room, which seem to enjoy the performance almost as much as the audience.

Is there any skerrick of excitement? Not really, although occasionally, you might notice the way Jeong moves around the room or glimpse the outline of her body beneath the baggy costume.

And there’s something about that body – which is the toned body of a dancer – that wants to get out. It wants us to get out, too – and to hell with the designated path of egress.

Reviewed by Andrew Fuhrmann

THEATRE
The Robot Dog ★★★
Melbourne Theatre Company, Southbank Theatre, until March 21

Many people grow up with siblings – Janelle (Kristie Nguy) grew up with a robotic therapy animal simply known as Dog. When she and her partner Harry (Ari Maza Long) move into her childhood home after the tragic death of her mum Wing Lam (Jing-Xuan Chan) – the cause of which is gradually revealed as the play progresses – Dog is there to comfort her and reveal what her mother’s life was like towards the end, provoking complicated feelings of grief, regret and anger in Janelle.

Kristie Nguy in a scene from The Robot Dog.Credit: Tiffany Garvie

Hong Kong-born multidisciplinary artist Roshelle Yee Pui Fong and Luritja writer and technologist Matthew Ngamurarri Heffernan’s collaboration – showing as part of Asia TOPA – is an ambitious play tackling big questions of cultural alienation, grief and the white supremacy of Australia’s criminal justice system.

It’s 2042, and if you can’t tell by the literal robot dog on set – an impressive mechanical metal creature who lights up, whirrs and speaks – you can tell from Janelle’s futuristic garb, the way Harry takes calls by wearing newfangled glasses and the constant encroaching of technology on their life.

Ari Maza Long and Kristie Nguy in a scene from The Robot Dog.Credit: Tiffany Garvie

The house is decked out with Alexa-reminiscent artificial intelligence named Huus, albeit far more sinister. Tensions begin to emerge – between Huus’ desire to optimise Janelle and Dog’s wish to be compassionate with her grief; between Janelle’s sentimentality for Wing Lam’s items that can’t be valued and AI’s hardwired compulsion to assess the “assets” by price.

Compounding Janelle’s grief is her inability to connect with her Cantonese heritage and, in turn, the memory of her mother – reflected by Harry’s inability to converse with his mum in Luritja and his dislocation from his own culture. They’re presented with “language augments”, a chip that you can attach to yourself that instantly gives you the ability to speak your mother tongue – both try it on to varying results.

There’s a disconnect between the big ideas of the play and their execution, however. The script can feel stilted at times, and the pat ending resolves threads too neatly. Janelle’s relationship with her deceased mother is arguably the fulcrum of the play, but the relationship between her and Harry feels curiously thin, as does the characterisation of Janelle herself.

Brockman’s lighting design bathes the stage in warm etherealness when the spectre of Wing Lam appears and stark white lighting when the AI are talking to one another. Nathan Burmeister’s set lovingly conjures a Chinese altar – site of Janelle’s eventual reconnection with her heritage – and the loss of a person, symbolised by ubiquitous $2 checked bags containing all of Wing Lam’s possessions.

The Robot Dog is most poignant when it’s mining humour and meaning from its material, whether it’s in the exploitation Harry faces at work as he becomes the poster boy for his company’s futile efforts at reconciliation (via tokenistic gestures like “Aboriginal flag muffins”), or in the different ways in which Cantonese and Luritja cultures intersect and sit apart from one another.
Reviewed by Sonia Nair

PERFORMANCE ART
ButohBar: OUT of ORDER II ★★★★
Abbotsford Convent, until March 9

You arrive at ButohBar: OUT of ORDER II to find a concrete forecourt transformed by dreamlike performance art. Walls sidle up to you and glare with disapproval. Masked figures with pendulous sex organs writhe and become entwined. Piles of rubbish skitter in the wind, as wimpled, seemingly heavily pregnant women waft up and down stairs – an echo, perhaps, of the dark history of the Abbotsford Convent as a workhouse for destitute mothers-to-be.

Butoh master Atsushi Takenouchi summons the audience in ButohBar: OUT of ORDER II.Credit: Michael Pham

By the time you’ve ordered sake from the bar, Butoh master Atsushi Takenouchi has entered with a drum and begun to sing to a demonic effigy. The ritual summons us inside a space which will transgress and upend all norms of performance.

You won’t get too comfortable at this nightclub at the end of the universe. Seating is arranged higgledy-piggledy, performance erupts from all corners, and master of ceremonies Yumi Umiumare will even play a whimsical game of musical chairs to keep you on your toes.

A scene from ButohBar: OUT of ORDER II. Nobody gets too comfortable at this nightclub at the end of the universe.Credit: Michael Pham

Umiumare has worked in Melbourne for decades, and this collaboration with Japanese and local talent – a follow-up to a sold-out first instalment in 2023 – is an anarchic fusion of cabaret, monologue, burlesque, puppetry, choreography and surreal and subversive performance art.

Warped visions emerge from the darkness. A wild black avian creature appears with a fibre-optic tongue. A puppet-mother gives birth to a child she dotes upon, dances with and devours, before the kid gives up and re-enters the womb. Female fighters beat each other to death with enormous breasts, as the audience eggs them on. Maude Davey delivers a monologue on art and time. A disgruntled burlesque artist has a striptease sabotaged by Umiumare, who wantonly throws cabbage onstage and eats a raw egg.

The grotesque beauty of butoh emerges in a pas de deux between Umiumare and Takenouchi. Their dance theatre is a marriage of death and life, the movement language convulsive and built from an involuntary, trancelike vocabulary attuned to bodily taboo. It feels almost risen from the grave – constructed as it is from spasm and throe and grimace, from bulging eye and lolling tongue.

If these figures are already dead, the comical arrival of a “Doctor Butoh” is much too late, and when she gives us the “ChatGPT” lowdown on the history and ambit of butoh as an avant-garde form, it’s really a sly kick at the human impulse to categorise. Butoh has always been a slippery style of experimental performance that resists definition, and it seduces even the good Doctor into its irrational embrace.

As the glitchy, dark synth dominated soundtrack from Hiroko Komiya swells to a climax, death rises to claim its due. Umiumare leads the audience in some primal screaming, and we’re released into the night reordered, and revivified, by the ecstatic encounter.
Reviewed by Cameron Woodhead

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