Sydney Festival 2022: what to watch
The must-see shows at this year’s Sydney Festival and how Olivia Ansell strived to create a program with ‘soul’.
Olivia Ansell is not a festival director given to cargo cults. Whether by pandemic or design, Ansell, in her debut as director of the Sydney Festival, is not spending big on imported shows but is instead digging deep into the city’s history and culture, its dazzling natural environment and favourite traditions.
There’s a sense in the program of Sydney being rediscovered, and that’s exactly as she intends it.
In outline, the festival – starting on January 6 – traverses the metropolis, from the Barangaroo headland to Penrith in the far west. It takes in some of Sydney’s spectacular locations but offers a different perspective on them, such as the historic boat sheds on Sydney Harbour and inner-city haunts such as Green Park.
And there’s the peeling back of time’s layers, evoking the spirit of the Eora nation and the history of performance and polemic at Speakers’ Corner.
“It’s tapping into everybody’s feeling about the city and what is the spirit of a Sydneysider,” Ansell says. “You know, we’ve weathered lockout laws, we’ve weathered lockdown, but I’m still convinced that despite all that, the soul of the Sydneysider is still there. We can be eclectic, we’re thinkers, we’re orators, we’re fun-loving and sometimes we’re just downright outrageous.”
The festival gets under way with an installation by artist and designer Jacob Nash, whose large-scale artwork will occupy the Barangaroo headland. While the design is yet to be revealed, Nash’s work is intended to be a signal for First Nations people to “seize the moment” and demand a better future.
Nash is the festival’s resident artist and his work, as head designer at Bangarra Dance Theatre, will also be seen in that company’s premiere of Wudjang: Not the Past, as part of the festival.
Speakers’ Corner in the Domain – the original open mic for preachers, wowsers, communists and anyone with something to say – has been reimagined as an open-air music stage. Now moved to the slab above Cook + Phillip Park Pool, Speakers’ Corner will be open for 22 festival nights with rock and pop music, some jazz and classical and some comedy thrown in. The line-up includes Amyl and the Sniffers, Busby Marou and James Morrison and William Barton.
And the soapbox traditions of Speakers’ Corner haven’t been forgotten. Every Sunday during the festival, the stage will be given over to a “curated” program of speakers, addressing everything from history to feminism, queerness and blackness.
To get a grip on Ansell’s thinking behind her program, it’s instructive to recall one of her past projects.
In 2016, Ansell and a group of friends put on an “immersive theatre” piece called Hidden Sydney that was all about animating the ghosts of once-glamorous, then-seedy Kings Cross.
It was staged in and around a former mansion-turned-brothel-turned nightclub. Patrons would arrive and think they had landed in a parallel universe of showgirls, prostitutes, police and cabaret artists – they were all part of the show.
Similarly, in her festival program, Ansell wants to bring the past to the surface, and remind Sydneysiders of what has been lost through gentrification, changing social habits and government policies. She names the Sydney Olympic Games in 2000 as a defining moment for the city, not always in a good way. It was when the city lost some of its carefree hedonism and silliness, she says, and started to take itself a bit too seriously.
With rising property prices, inner-city areas such Kings Cross and Potts Point became unaffordable for a diverse population. The smartphone era ushered in dating apps, video streaming and home-delivered meals, diminishing the city’s social life.
And there were the lockout laws that were intended to prevent alcohol-fuelled violence but which also killed off the once-boisterous live-music scene.
“Sadly, over 200 live-music venues were closed as a result of that,” Ansell says. “And now we’ve had the lockdown.
“Thankfully, live culture is still something that people crave, and there’s live music now that the lockout laws have been lifted. I really hope that comes back to Sydney – we can’t just turn it on overnight, because those music venues and establishments were built on years of trade and trust between artists and audiences. But I really do hope that we see a return to that.”
Ansell grew up in Sydney’s Sutherland Shire and spent her teenage years studying dance at the famous Bodenwieser Dance Centre in Chippendale – another Sydney institution. She worked as a freelance producer, making shows such as Hidden Sydney and was artistic director of the Sydney Comedy Festival, among other roles.
Most recently, she was the head of contemporary performance at the Sydney Opera House where she produced Lin-Manuel Miranda’s In the Heights and Hannah Gadsby’s show, Douglas.
Her priority at the Sydney Festival has been to give opportunities to local artists and companies that have been unable to perform during the pandemic.
“In NSW, many artists haven’t worked for six months,” she says.
“So, they’re really playing a key and pivotal role in helping the festival get back on its feet, with world-class, high-quality work in the program.
“We do have some international collaborations as well but uniting and recovering our local sector needs to take priority.”
Among the performances is a daring outdoor spectacular by physical-theatre company Legs on the Wall, called Thaw. Before each day-long performance, a specially prepared block of ice will be hoisted by a crane 20m above the forecourt of the Sydney Opera House. In this “slow-drip suspense thriller”, a woman must navigate the melting, shrinking reality of her iceberg home.
There is new contemporary dance from Antony Hamilton, artistic director of Melbourne’s Chunky Move, and Sydney Dance Company will present Ohad Naharin’s Decadance, devised with the Israeli choreographer’s uninhibited Gaga technique. Audiences will be inspired by the acrobatic thrills of Circus Monoxide, and by a new collaboration between Circa and the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra in a performance called Italian Baroque.
The theatre program includes Edward Albee’s emblematic play of marital discord, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, performed by a diverse cast, and Stay, a new play by S. Shakthidharan (of Counting and Cracking fame) that also involves cross-cultural collaboration.
Musical theatre gets a workout with new productions of A Chorus Line and Lizzie, as well as the Australian premiere of Girl from the North Country, featuring songs by Bob Dylan.
Organisaing a festival around a pandemic has again proved challenging.
Ansell says the program has been planned to allow for indoor theatre experiences and also, as a Covid-safety measure, performances in the open air such as at Speakers Corner.
There’s a digital offering, with livestreams from Speakers Corner, the Reckoning series of talks, and of Thaw, at the Sydney Opera House.
Other online performances include a “cinematic opera” called Human Voices, based on Poulenc’s La Voix Humaine, and visiting playwright Javaad Alipoor will present hybrid live-online performances of his plays Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World, and Rich Kids: A History of Shopping Malls in Tehran.
One of the festival highlights, Qween Lear – a reimagined version of Shakespeare’s play, set around the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras – has been cancelled due to the rise of Covid cases. But a cancelled show from last year’s festival, the local premiere of The Pulse, from Adelaide-based acrobatic troupe Gravity and Other Myths, has been booked again this year, at the Roslyn Packer Theatre.
Another complication has been the withdrawal of some artists in a protest over sponsorship by the Israeli government of one of the shows in the program.
Ansell says planning the festival has been a rollercoaster of emotions, from confidence and optimism to an abundance of caution and being prepared for the worst.
“We want to restore culture safely to the city,” she says.
“So, it was making sure we had a really great balance of work that was indoors and work that was outdoors in iconic locations around Sydney to animate the city in summer.
“We want to encourage people to engage with culture in a safe way and build that trust. It’s getting the balance right for the city.”
-
The best of the Sydney Festival
Thaw
A woman hangs on for dear life as her world melts away. Legs on the Wall’s show involves a lone acrobat on a specially made iceberg, suspended by crane 20m above the ground. The free event starts at 10am and finishes at 8.30pm.
Girl from the North Country
Lisa McCune stars in this musical with songs by Bob Dylan, including Like a Rolling Stone, Hurricane and Forever Young. Playwright Conor MacPherson has fashioned a story set around a guesthouse in an American town during the Depression.
Stay
After the success of his 2019 Sydney Festival play Counting and Cracking, S. Shakthidharan returns with a new story, Stay, that starts with the discovery of two skeletons in a dry creekbed in Queensland.
The Pulse
An ensemble of acrobats and a chorus of voices are held in exquisite counterpoint in The Pulse, from Adelaide troupe Gravity and Other Myths. Sydney audiences at last have the chance to see the show which was cancelled last year due to Covid.
Floors of Heaven
Andrew “Boy” Charlton Pool, a prime swim-and-show-off spot on Sydney Harbour, will be fitted with underwater speakers for an immersive meditation session. British DJ Leon Vynehall provides the “peaceful sonic tapestries” while the audience floats in the water.
