THEATRE
Where is Joy? ★★★★
45 downstairs, Until November 9

Curious that Anthony Weigh’s play, Sunday (MTC, 2023), which focused on arts patron Sunday Reed and the Heide Circle, gave rather short shrift to her close friend, Joy Hester.

With her art largely overlooked during her short and turbulent life, Hester has since been recognised as a significant artist working at Heide among a group – Sidney Nolan, Danila Vassilieff and Albert Tucker among them – at the vanguard of Australian modernism.

This one-woman show from Emma Louise Pursey is a defiant act of assertion against female erasure. It’s also a resurrection of an artist and poet of unnerving intensity.

You can no more look away from Pursey’s Hester than you can from the artist’s fluid black line drawings. All those unknowable eyes trapped askance or lowered, torn or reduced to slits: Hester’s insistence on the incommensurability of vision is plain, distilled, yet intoxicates the viewer into complex alchemies of felt experience.

Pursey weighs biographical detail into such alchemies. A repressive suburban childhood in Elwood (her mother locked her young daughter in a lightless box for “confession” when she’d been naughty) sparked a yearning for freedom that compelled Hester towards illumination in life and art.

The peroxide blonde phase. The unashamed sexuality. The affairs; the abortions. The abandonment of husband Albert Tucker, leaving her son, Sweeney, to the care of Sunday Reed, while she ran off to start a new life with artist and poet Gray Smith.

If there’s a morbid quality to Hester’s art, it’s because death was never far away. Her own father died from a heart attack (or perhaps by suicide) when she was a girl, and Hester was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma – then incurable – at just 27.

Pursey works all this into a wild and wonderful monodrama with poetic elements, framed by modernist projections and music. You could wish for more modulation in tone and pitch, and there are a few bung notes on the poetic side of things.

Yet Pursey’s firebrand delivery serves to emphasise the relentlessness with which Joy Hester seized life, and the indomitability required to break through the wall of misogyny which saw her contribution devalued for so long.

It’s more inspired theatre, and truer to the devil-may-care bohemianism of the commune at Heide, than Sunday was, and a must-see for those with an interest in Australian visual arts.

Reviewed by Cameron Woodhead

THEATRE
Dying: A Memoir ★★★
Adapted by Benjamin Law from the book by Cory Taylor, MTC, Arts Centre Melbourne

Until November 29

Author Cory Taylor penned Dying: A Memoir in her final months, as she was dying from cancer. The book was rushed to the presses by Text Publishing in record time, so that she lived long enough to experience its effect on readers – though not its short-listing for the 2017 Stella Prize, nor its inclusion in Barack Obama’s best books of that year.

Taylor took modest aim at the stigma around dying, and how we cope (or fail to) with the brute reality of it. She sought to end what she perceived as a “monstrous silence” – an aversion she knew from experience can make it harder than it should be to live through.

Of course, theatre is no stranger to dying. From the euphemistic (“our little life is rounded with a sleep” from The Tempest) to the opposite (women “give birth astride of a grave” in Waiting for Godot), dying is a theatrical obsession.

Playing dying characters can be a grim and gruelling challenge for actors – Jane Montgomery Griffiths as a cancer-riddled English professor in the Pulitzer winning play Wit, or Natasha Herbert as a free spirit succumbing to early-onset dementia in The Hall – and hey, I’ve even died onstage myself. At a show called Oedipus Schmoedipus. Poison. (I was terrific.)

You can put all that aside at Dying: A Memoir. Benjamin Law’s adaptation isn’t drama, really. It’s more just storytelling onstage – condensing clear-eyed vignettes, and Taylor’s reflections on her experience, into a super approachable guide to thinking about what dying involves if you’re not good at that. Dying for Beginners, if you like.

It’s also quite funny. Comedian and performer Genevieve Morris kicks off proceedings with a meta-theatrical flourish – a kind of irreverent reverse heckle – that disarms the audience while adding another layer of authenticity.

Morris herself has had a brush with mortality, having been diagnosed with Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma in 2017, and seems to relish assuming Taylor’s persona – especially the acerbic wit and finely-tuned bullshit detector when it comes to the failings of the medical establishment.

An oncologist who can’t bring himself to talk like a real person about dying. Free post-diagnosis counselling sessions that turn into a “government-sponsored hostage situation”.

In contrast, the support group Taylor attends through Exit International, before voluntary assisted dying became legal in Victoria, proves a lifeline of camaraderie and autonomy through an intensely isolating and disempowering process.

Intimate family stories add emotional texture. Guilt at hiding her illness from young sons. Gratitude at how she fell in love with Japanese husband Shin and his native land (where mourners sift through the bone fragments of deceased loved ones). Determination not to suffer the indignities of her mother’s death from dementia.

Some of this is curiously muted, though, and you’re unlikely to need a hanky. The comedic mask predominates in a show that isn’t without a glib side, and which rejects tear-jerking tropes almost to a fault, anxious as it is to suggest that dying is no tragedy in and of itself.

In compensation, director Jean Tong shapes a work that’s smartly calculated to lower our defences and to make a difficult subject easier to talk about. That’s the essence of Taylor’s intention in writing Dying: A Memoir, and the show honours it with empathy and integrity.

Reviewed by Cameron Woodhead

THEATRE
The Talented Mr. Ripley ★★★★
Arts Centre Melbourne, Until November 23

Discerning audiences in search of chills and thrills this Halloween had a seductive option at the opening night of The Talented Mr. Ripley. Patricia Highsmith’s famously dark-hearted novel now haunts the stage in Melbourne, courtesy of Sydney Theatre Company in an adaptation by playwright Joanna Murray-Smith.

There’s no one better to pen an adaptation of Highsmith’s classic. Murray-Smith’s play Switzerland (2016) was a suspenseful, deliciously barbed two-hander with Highsmith herself as a character. The plot centred on the reclusive author receiving an unnerving visitation from a young man – claiming to be her publisher – who attempts to persuade Highsmith to write a sequel to The Talented Mr. Ripley, unleashing the shadow of that novel’s psychological game of cat and mouse.

It was one of the most gripping plays Murray-Smith has ever written, and perfect preparation to return to the source in what proves to be a richly drawn adaptation, slick and sure-footed, heightened and theatrical, and yet as well-paced and novelistic in ambit as superior television.

Murray-Smith is particularly astute on the psychology of wealth and entitlement, the resentment of the dispossessed, and thwarted homoeroticism (which emerges briefly from under the veil of homophobia, only to return to the darkness to burst into toxic bloom).

She leans into the aspect of The Talented Mr. Ripley that reads like a Henry James novel about moneyed Americans in Europe, or doffs its cap to F. Scott Fitzgerald, before cheerfully perverting the sun-drenched Italian idyll into a serial killer thriller.

The writing’s a gift to actors, and under Sarah Goodes’ direction, the performers seize their chance for glory.

Will McDonald achieves a monumental acting feat as Tom Ripley – over two hours onstage without a noticeable break – but the force in his tour de force is a slow-moving disturbance. Doldrums of social awkwardness. Gusts of repressed desire. The cyclonic intensification is situational, only occurring under favourable conditions. Anyone could become a serial killer – that’s what makes Ripley so compelling, to the chilling calm he finds in the eye of the storm.

Charismatic supporting performances light the way to murder. There’s Roman Delo as Dickie Greenleaf, the errant heir to a fortune, Andrew McFarlane as his blue-blooded father, Claude Scott-Mitchell as the suspicious fiancee, Faisal Hamza as the disreputable best mate. All give finely tailored performances stitched to a perfect fit by the appeal, as well as the derangements and cruelties and blind spots, of the super-rich.

If you’d forgotten that The Talented Mr. Ripley was covering the same satirical ground as The White Lotus decades before the latter was a thing, these performances will forcefully remind you of it. And the humour is completed by Johnny Nasser’s droll turn as the hapless Italian detective on Ripley’s trail.

I wasn’t wild about the slightly undercooked set or lighting design, but given the quality of the writing, direction and performances, it hardly matters.

Highsmith’s dark creation has been translated to the stage with sophistication and skill, and fans of black comic crime will be sorry if they miss out.
Reviewed by Cameron Woodhead

MUSICAL
Hair The Musical ★★★
Athenaeum Theatre, October 31

Flares, flower headbands, and psychedelic prints – and that’s just the audience!

Set in the late 1960s against the backdrop of anti-Vietnam War protests and the hippie movement, Hair explores an era of counterculture espoused in values of peace and freedom. The Australian Shakespeare Company is behind this production, renowned for its approach to outdoor theatre under the artistic direction of Glenn Elston. This iteration of the Tony- and Emmy Award-winning musical, however, is staged at the Athenaeum Theatre; the same venue that hosted the show 30 years ago when it was last staged in Melbourne.

Elston co-produced the 1992 production, joining the then national tour as director. He stated in interviews that the show contains the soundtrack of his youth, featuring hits such as Aquarius and Good Morning Starshine. The material has remained as close to the original text as possible, retaining its cultural appropriation of Indian culture, particularly in dance number Be-In ‘Hare-Krishna’, and fetishisation of black men in song Black Boys.

Even the way race was referred to as “black, white, yellow, red” felt derogatory and reductive. These moments create a necessary tension, highlighting how out-of-step it feels with contemporary social politics, while also being indicative of how far discourse has come. Despite this, there are still themes that resonate: the anti-war protests mirroring the Free Palestine marches of the past two years, the fight against capitalist values with the rising cost of living and the push to preserve our planet.

The staging and costuming represent the context well. All the set, props and costumes were secured by foraging second-hand shops, marketplaces, and previous productions, which is in-line with the environmentally conscious rhetoric in the dialogue. Emblems of New York surround an arch-shaped scaffolding, including signs indicating Central Park, Greenwich Village and Waverley, which are spotlighted or lit up at various parts of the show to mark locations. A circular screen plays psychedelic patterns, astrological and peace symbols, and Hindu iconography. Alongside a platform painted with the yin and yang symbol, it effectively communicates how the belief system of the time was drawn from other cultures.

Alex Cooper as Claude is a charismatic and energetic lead, and Maxwell Simon feels loose and carefree as Berger, to the point that you don’t know if he’s improvising. There is humour embedded throughout, often found in minor characters, including Maverick Newman, who cross-dresses as a woman from the “Christian Paranoid Association”. There appears a genuine connection between the cast, and they solicit cheers from the crowd through active engagement, like suggesting there’s “OG tribe members here” (potentially a reference to the 1992 cast in the audience).

The sexual references are very overt, conveyed through suggestive choreography and a song that mentions sodomy, fellatio, cunnilingus and masturbation. Some of the characters cheekily flash their underwear, gently teasing towards a climactic scene with full frontal nudity that feels provocative – in a good way – showcasing the human form as God intended.

Hair is a celebration of rebellion and liberation, and by the end, you’ve let the sunshine in, as the penultimate song instructs, and left your inhibitions behind.
Reviewed Vyshnavee Wijekumar

OPERA
The Barber of Seville ★★
The Regent Theatre, until November 5

Sandwiched between Oasis at Marvel Stadium and cricket at the MCG, Opera Australia’s spring season sprung with slightly less verve than its mammoth event counterparts on Friday night.

Outside the Regent Theatre, the city was crawling with people in their Halloween best, but inside, it was comedy on show with Rossini’s Barber of Seville. A well-worn production of a well-loved opera served as an inconspicuous re-entry into Melbourne’s operatic society for the national company.

Opera Australia has been playing musical chairs with Melbourne venues since the State Theatre’s closure in 2024, (including last season’s misfire at Margaret Court Arena), now finally landing at The Regent. The smaller auditorium allows for a closer encounter with the singers and orchestra, and it caters to long-term residencies. OA has set up camp here until its run of the musical Anastasia concludes in February.

Rossini’s Il barbiere di Sivilgia is the most popular comic opera in the world, with lots of tunes that have made their way into popular culture. The plot itself, however, has begun to feel laborious.

We begin with what can be the most roaring, rollicking overture in all opera (note: it’s the Bugs Bunny one). While conductor Tahu Matheson led the orchestra through a clean, controlled rendition, it didn’t raise the roof. This tempered tone set the manner of the rest of the performance. Beautiful? Yes. But boisterous? Not really.

The four leads are double cast, with Samuel Dundas (Figaro), Helen Sherman (Rosina), Shanul Sharma (Count Almaviva) and Andrew Moran (Dr Bartolo) taking the stage on opening night.

Renowned for his vocal agility, Sharma delivered rapid-fire coloratura with clarity and top notes with absurd ease. Moran delights in the Italian patter style, and it’s clear he knows Bartolo inside out.

It felt as though Dundas was either slightly under the weather, or his voice has matured as such that this repertoire is no longer quite right for him. His reliably excellent stage presence serves Figaro well, but his baritone sounded heavy, some of his vocal ornamentation clunky.

Though she possesses a gorgeously full, plum-coloured voice, Sherman’s Rosina was without the feisty teenage spirit and girlish lightness the character needs. It’s noted young mezzo Emily Edmonds is the alternate Rosina and should be considered no B cast at all.

Elijah Moshinsky’s production, inspired by the silent film era, is an enjoyable take, but it’s 30 years old. Perhaps OA’s focus was more on coming back to town in a safe pair of hands, but with this Barber in particular, it resulted in a missed opportunity to open the season with a bang.
Reviewed by Bridget Davies

MUSIC
Crowded House ★★★★★
Palais Theatre, October 29

“It’s good to be home,” Neil Finn opened on Wednesday night, and damn, it was good to welcome them back. Crowded House are a hit-making machine, yet they’ve somehow dodged the uncool stigma that follows bands like U2 or Coldplay. Maybe it’s because they don’t take themselves too seriously. They’re deeply funny live. The whole vibe was casual and charming, like finding an excellent little pub band, but with immaculate sound, seasoned crew, and a surprisingly large merch spread.

The first set was acoustic, with the band play-acting as their own support act and renaming themselves “Crispy”. Not the finest band name, but “Crispy” delivered gorgeous versions of Pineapple Head, Four Seasons in One Day, and At the Station, featuring Vika and Linda Bull’s heavenly vocals.

Keeping it playful, Neil debated bassist Nick Seymour about birds. “All Australian birds are loud and sound Australian; New Zealand birds are lovely and less self-confident.” This led to guitarist Liam Finn launching into a patriotic version of The Lord of the Rings theme, ending a timeless bit of stage banter. They also played a great new track, It Was a Small Detail, which deserves to be a hit.

The second set was where things got rocking. Less banter, more hits, and a set like a Reg Mombassa fever dream. The Palais’ bolted chairs tried to keep us seated, but who could stay still through Distant Sun, When You Come, Better Be Home Soon, and To the Island? We even got playful, improvised snippets of the Bee Gees’ New York Mining Disaster and Devo’s Whip It. We just had to stand up so we could get down.

A mid-set lull for newer songs gave way to the final triumphant run: Something So Strong, Don’t Dream It’s Over, Weather with You and Fall at Your Feet. Swaying and singing, the whole venue became a choir.

There are gigs, and then there are GIGS. This was the latter. And keep an eye on that support act, “Crispy”. Yes, they’re new, but now they’re getting somewhere.
Reviewed by Andrew McClelland

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