You may never have heard of the composer, but her work is thrilling
By Shamim Razavi, John Shand, Kate Prendergast, Frances Howe and Peter McCallum
Ode to Joy
Sydney Philharmonia
Opera House Concert Hall, October 27
Reviewed by PETER McCALLUM
★★★
The six volumes of Essays in Musical Analysis (1935) by respected English writer Donald Francis Tovey, covering 254 musical works, discuss only one piece by a woman – Dame Ethel Smyth’s Mass in D. Although Tovey’s lapse would be unacceptable today, he was generous and unpatronising to Smyth, avoiding gendered references either to her or her music, and comparing her setting to Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis, while also praising its independence.
The performance by Sydney Philharmonia’s Festival Chorus, the Sydney Youth Orchestra and the Sydney Philharmonia Orchestra under conductor Elizabeth Scott revealed Smyth’s Mass as a work of vigour and vivid expression. The opening Kyrie begins in portentous unison from the male voices, swelling polyphonically to bring in all voices to an impressive climax before a quiet ending returns to the opening theme.
Bronwyn Douglass’ high notes shone like light through mist.Credit: Keith Saunders
Although the Gloria would normally follow, Smyth suggested it be placed at the end for concert performances and the work moves straight to an energised Credo propelled by syncopated accompaniment from the SYO.
The texture softens for the tenor solo Qui propter nos homines and in the Et incarnatus section, soprano Bronwyn Douglass sustained high notes against a pulsating accompaniment like light through mist. The choir sang the darkly anguished fugue on Crucifixus with disciplined ensemble after which the Credo mounts in episodes for solo quartet (Douglass, Sherman, Daley and baritone Michael Honeyman) and chorus to a stirring closing fugue.
Mezzo soprano Helen Sherman combined with horns at the start of the Sanctus to create a rich blend. Tenor Bradley Daley sustained the Agnus Dei with a voice with the fresh grain of undressed timber before being joined by the choir for the clamorous Miserere Nobis. Smyth’s instinct to place the Gloria last was fully vindicated here. The Mass closed in forceful exultance, reflecting a sense of thrilling joy in religious belief - which Smyth was soon to shed.
The concert was conceived to mark the two hundredth anniversary of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony though the commemoration was wisely restricted to the last movement, since a performance of the first three movements by the SYO would have lacked the impact of Smyth’s Mass. The SYO’s performance of Beethoven’s overture The Consecration of the House, Opus 124, under Scott contained strong moments from wind and brass but some of the more animated contrapuntal writing had ensemble challenges.
Smyth’s The March of the Woman, written in support of female suffrage (support which at one point landed her in prison), is written more to be sung than listened to, but its four verses were brief, emphatic and sung with enthusiasm. Though with some uneven tempo and choral strain in the upper notes, Beethoven’s Choral Finale to the Ninth Symphony mirrored the close to the first half in its magnificence.
Elgar’s Enigma Variations
Sydney Symphony Orchestra
Opera House, October 25
Reviewed by PETER McCALLUM
★★★★
Nobuyuki Tsujii (Nobu) played the subdued opening melody of Rachmaninov’s Piano Concert No. 3 - so haunting in its wistful plainness - with quiet precision and minimally tapered phrasing. The intense concentration that was later to drive his performance was held in check for the moment.
But as the activity on the piano increased as this theme passes to the orchestra, his projection developed a keen edge from which it rarely resiled throughout this most demanding of works. During the extended buildup in the development, his playing dominated the texture with penetrating articulation though Nobu, who is blind, listened keenly to each orchestral detail, never missing a breath.
The playing wasn’t notable so much for its nuance as for its mesmerising focus. Nobu played the dense chords of the cadenza with unlayered power. When the flute, oboe, clarinet and horn by turns quietly took up the theme after this, Nobu relaxed the tone and accompanied with laser-cut detail. After the expressive orchestral theme that starts the second movement, he let in a more varied palette of textures. The finale was gripping and spellbinding.
Canadian conductor Nicolas Ellis and the SSO began the program with a discerningly balanced performance of Bach’s Passacaglia and Fugue in C minor in an arrangement by Sir Andrew Davis who was to have conducted the concert but who sadly died in April this year.
Davis brought the ear of both an organist and a conductor to the piece, and his arrangement is intriguing, original and a refreshing addition to the repertoire of Bach orchestral transcriptions. The opening gave out the passacaglia theme with detached notes on the piano prolonged on lower strings and the piece proceeded with ingenious combinations to recreate and augment the sounds of a variety of organ stops as Bach might have imagined them, rather than make an orchestral showpiece in the style of Stokowski.
After interval Ellis led a performance of Elgar’s Variations on an Original Theme, Opus 36, Enigma, which unfolded gently with warmth and careful balance as though guarding against untoward impetuousness. Viola player Richard Waters lent a distinctive transparent sweetness to Variation 6 and cellist Kaori Yamagami led Variation 12 with expressive melancholy and elegiac beauty. Variation 10 had distant, enigmatic delicacy like a dance heard through closed terrace doors from outside on a summer evening.
Andreas Scholl and the Australian World Orchestra
The Neilson, Pier 2/3
October 23
Reviewed by PETER McCALLUM
★★★★½
It is hard to know whether it is the alabaster smoothness of his voice or the deep humanity and clarity of his musical declamation that is the more persuasive but, either way, countertenor Andreas Scholl’s ability to connect and communicate through musical phrases is a rare treasure.
In the arias of Bach’s cantata Vergnugte Ruh he paired with the even-grained woody sound of Emma Black’s oboe d’amore to create graciously intermingling lines that conjured a sense of accepting serenity, while in the recitative passages Scholl sang with glowing warmth and pleading sincerity.
Andreas Scholl: Glowing warmth and pleading sincerity. Credit:
The accompaniment from members of the Australian World Orchestra, led in the first half by Madeleine Easton, was sombre and subdued (though with some obligato unevenness in the final aria). The same natural expressiveness informed Vivaldi’s short motet Filiae Maestae comprising recitative, aria and a further recitative originally intended as an introduction to a Miserere that is now lost.
Against a spiky chipped accompaniment texture from the strings, Scholl sang plangently sustained musical phrases, shaped and finished to perfection. In Ein Wallfarhtslied (Pilgrim’s Song) by Arvo Part, the extended phrases are confined mainly to a single pitch, yet Scholl created within this note a universe of expressive nuance.
As an encore, Scholl offered a slowly drawn out reading of the Agnus Dei from Bach’s Mass in B minor. It seemed a great luxury to hear a singer of Scholl’s stature in the intimate setting of The Neilson, a performance venue of about 200 seats.
In the second half, the program moved forward about six decades from Bach’s sober inner ruminations to the sublime outgoing grace of Mozart’s Gran Partita, the Serenade in B flat major, K. 361 for wind instruments and double bass (Matthew McDonald, principal double bass player with the Berlin Philharmonic).
To the multi-textured possibilities of pairs of oboes, clarinets, bassoons and four horns, Mozart added the woody open sound of a pair of basset horns, and gives these four players a moment of delightfully cooing banter in the trio section of the first Menuetto.
Oboist Shefali Pryor led with animation and elegance, playing the haunting long note of the famous Adagio with rounded warmth and defined edge. This was a discerningly balanced ensemble of rich timbral variety and high professionalism. The Australian World Orchestra usually comes in larger conglomerations, but these small chamber-sized ensembles can be seen as down-payments on their Mahler festival, planned for 2025.
The Weeknd
October 22, Accor Stadium
Reviewed by Frances Howe
★★★
Cloaked and surrounded by veiled women, The Weeknd, aka Canadian Abel Tesfaye emerges from a two-storey church-like building in the middle of a long stage. He begins a set heavy on half-baked quasi-religious references with The Crowd, from his coming sixth album, singing: “The crowd will scream my name”.
The show is heavy on quasi-religious references.Credit: Gregg Porteous
However, this image of self-appointed god is soon punctured by the anachronistic, yearning synth-pop of How Do I Make You Love Me? The equally upbeat Can’t Feel My Face follows, piercing the film once and for all.
The Weeknd is talented performer and notable vocalist and his self-importance is well-earned though slightly distracting. Before House of Balloons/Glass Table Girls he interacts with the crowd with autotune turned on, the first of several times throughout the evening. Simple step-clap choreography during Starboy, sporadic fist pumps and an awkward moment of air guitar before Save Your Tears are more daggy dad than superstar cool.
There is more than enough material to fill a two-hour set with only a hint of monotony and when he mimes a chef’s kiss after Blinding Lights and tells the crowd to “jump” during Less Than Zero, it feels like the best year-six disco ever.
Impressive fireworks close out the show as The Weeknd finishes with Moth to a Flame, bowing before a castle projected onto the screens above him, and neglecting the prop castle behind him that for most of the set stood unused.
The Weeknd plays a second Sydney show on October 23.
Yoga Play
Reginald Theatre, October 19
Until October 26
Reviewed by JOHN SHAND
★★★½
Don’t judge the play by its title because what curious fare this is: like having a bagel or fries with your authentic Indian curry. The spicy part is the satire, and the carbs are the feel-good factor. In fact, Indian-American playwright Dipika Guha may even have invented a new genre with Yoga Play: kind satire. In a program note, she says that she wrote it because she needed to laugh, and it mostly works for us, too, as she skewers the southern California yoga industry.
Romola (Camila Ponte Alvarez) offers everything from prenatal yoga to weight-training yoga for $400 an hour.Credit: Phil Erbacher
Joan (Andrea Moor) has been hired as CEO of yoga-wear company Jojomon, whose founder John (Thomas Larkin) is much too busy spending his millions on tuning out to run a business. Joan walks straight into a firestorm: the nosey BBC has exposed that the company’s Bangladeshi factory is largely staffed by underpaid, overworked children.
Her colleagues Raj (Nat Jobe) and Fred (Jemwel Danao) are impressed that Joan’s solution is not to address the ethics, but to band-aid the festering public relations. She needs an Indian guru to champion Jojomon’s authenticity, and her first hope is LA’s premiere wellness institute, where Romola (Camila Ponte Alvarez) offers everything from prenatal yoga to weight-training yoga for $400 an hour. Alas, no guru.
When she finally hauls in the revered Guruji from the Himalayan foothills, he turns out to be Alan (also Larkin), an ex-pat American. He might be suitably zoned-out on meditation, but he’s the wrong look, and Raj, who knows nothing of his own Hindi culture, must suddenly become a yogi laid bare before the millions.
Guha satirises racism, racial stereotyping and southern California’s health and image obsessions with keen observation and deft wit. Mina Morita’s production (for National Theatre of Parramatta and La Boite Theatre) is dazzlingly designed by James Lew, catching assorted business and new age tropes, aided by Mark Bolotin’s multimedia work. Morita’s cast generally excels at sharpening the satirical shears, although just occasionally they settle for the lowest-hanging laughs, and become overly cartoonish.
Standing out is Larkin’s ex-pat guru. He mostly just has to adopt a lotus position, close his eyes and ignore everyone, and yet somehow he seems to spread a certain calmness and peace (just like a real guru!), so you leave the theatre pleasantly relaxed – as well as having had a giggle.
DEAR EVAN HANSEN
Roslyn Packer Theatre, October 18
Until December 1
Reviewed by JOHN SHAND
★★★
Hamilton rightfully won the Tony Award for Best Musical in 2016. A year later, they lowered the bar to Dear Evan Hansen, reminding us of the Tonys’ wild inconsistencies. In 1958 The Music Man beat West Side Story, in 1972 Two Gentlemen of Verona beat Follies, in 1988 The Phantom of the Opera beat Into the Woods and in 2017 Dear Evan Hansen beat Come from Away. What were they thinking?
It’s not that this show’s story-telling, characterisations, dialogue or lyrics are always dire: sometimes they’re merely ordinary; occasionally, even convincing. But the music is profoundly flawed.
Most accomplished musical theatre composers – think Richard Rodgers, Stephen Sondheim, John Kander or Lin-Manuel Miranda – use music to further define character. Not Benj Pasek and Justin Paul. No, everyone – male, female, nerd, suicidal hipster, parent or teenager – seems to be singing the same dreary song to such an extent the few exceptions come as blessed relief.
Dean Bryant’s production of Dear Evan Hansen is mostly expertly rendered.Credit: Daniel Boud
Pasek and Paul achieve this homogeneity via the infuriating habit of pitching great swathes of melody in the upper reaches of a given singer’s range. This makes almost every song climactic – except they can’t all be that, so instead they simply become overblown, and, when the show does need a musically climactic moment, it struggles to emerge from the prevailing whiney stratosphere. If this was a conscious strategy, it was as misguided as Napoleon invading Russia or Baz Luhrmann invading The Great Gatsby. It also becomes startlingly hard on the ears, like two hours of cats fighting.
The show’s core conception was certainly worthy enough. Evan Hansen (Beau Woodbridge) is a friendless high school kid whose father bowed out of his life “temporarily” a decade earlier. His mostly absent mother (Verity Hunt-Ballard) works as a nurse and studies law, and Evan’s therapist has suggested he write letters to himself to help establish a positive mindset.
When fellow loner Connor Murphy (Harry Targett) commits suicide, Evan doesn’t correct the belief that these letters were actually penned by Connor; that they were secret friends. Suddenly grieving for Connor becomes hip: kids who usually only communicate via devices find themselves rolling down a hill in an ever-growing snowball of shared grief and imagined connections, with Evan as the griever-in-chief.
All generations have their share of ostracised teens, but suffering that fate in the social-media era seems especially cruel, and Pask and Paul’s songs and Steven Levenson’s book partially tap into this. Had they dared to dig deeper, I’d be writing that this moved almost beyond words. Instead, I’m left quietly fuming that such an important subject has been buried in mundanity, screeching and treacle; bewildered that I barely come to care about Evan, let alone anyone else.
The fault lies not with the performances: Dean Bryant’s production (for Sydney Theatre Company and Michael Cassel Group) is mostly expertly rendered. When given the chance to sing a genuinely affecting song like Words Fail, Woodbridge nails it, and there are other creditable performances, including from Natalie O’Donnell as Connor’s mother and Georgia Laga-aia as his sister.
The fault lies with the confounded music not delineating the characters and not drawing us more deeply into the predicament than can be achieved by lame melodies, faux emotions and sung subtext. Even the orchestrations by the usually exceptional Alex Lacamoire merely compound the irritation.
Infinitely happier are the design elements, especially Jeremy Allen’s elastic set, so at least you’re engaged visually, as you wait forlornly to be engaged by the rest.
FLAT EARTHERS
Hayes Theatre, October 17
Until November 9
Reviewed by KATE PRENDERGAST
★★★★
Ria’s in a digital debunker posse, a new-gen internet missionary of truth. Flick’s spent her whole life in a desert bunker thinking the world is flat. Their meet-cute begins as misidentified internet trolling, then a Facetime, and escalates fast to a scissors emoji. But does their Romeo and Juliet online lesbian romance stand a chance, if they can’t even agree on the very ground they stand on? And what happens when one decides to sacrifice the facts of her own reality for love?
Flat Earthers has a bonkers plot bursting with camp energy.Credit: John McRae
Exploding with camp, with a bonkers plot that careens into an Illuminati apocalypse, queer pop musical Flat Earthers is a triumph of collaboration, six years in the making. Originally destined for the cubby-sized SBW Stables, it finds its rightful debut at the pro-fitted Hayes in co-production with Griffin Theatre. With winsome song-and-dance performances from its cast of nine, it is here to spread its message of open minds and open hearts in our age of raging misinformation, polarisation, and worlds-destroying intolerance.
A young creative trio reunited, book and lyrics are by Jean Tong and Lou Wall, with songwriting by Wall and James Gales. Declan Greene directs, giving it the space it needs to radiate its optimism and win us over with its dorky-sweet, conspiracy theory parable of community and care.
The book is simple – the lyrics are very literal – but it seems that’s the winning schtick of Wall, this year’s Sydney Comedy Festival top-gonger. With the sweet-voiced leads of Manali Datar (an adorable Flick) and Shannen Alyce Quan (our super-relatable Ria), even basic lines have humorous appeal.
Although the first act takes place entirely online, Sydney’s lighting and set don Brockman has created a phenomenally immersive, vapourwave cyber-realm for our characters to play in. Under a glowing double arch, and above an iconic perspective grid floor, a seapunk neon wave of memes, emojis, interfaces and chat windows float us on nostalgia tides – Xanthe Dobbie’s visual projections on a tasselled screen. Emma White is game for this vibe, with her terrific costumes including a fluoro-green corset (worn by the play’s arch nemesis, Aunty Donna’s Michelle Brasier), druid capes, and trendy subculture-sampled fits.
Imaginatively chaotic, technically ambitious, and putting underrepresented lesbian love on stage, Flat Earthers is a big, dumb, fun and very gay new musical for our times. I suspect it is destined for many heart emojis and much applause.
UB40
Hordern Pavilion
October 16
Reviewed by SHAMIM RAZAVI
★★★
If a ship is gradually renovated with new timber, plank-by-plank, when does it stop being the original ship? It is a question philosophers have long wrestled with but even Plutarch didn’t anticipate UB40’s response: never, and if you reuse some of the planks you can have two original ships.
While the Gallagher brothers have managed to bury their differences, the Campbells remain true to their clan’s feuding heritage, with Robin bringing us tonight those from the original line-up who remain alive save for Ali, who tours his alternate “UB40 featuring Ali Campbell” of which he is the only original plank.
Robin Campbell leads the ‘original’ UB40.Credit: WireImage
Matt Doyle has replaced Ali on vocals in this “original” band and, mostly, you would hardly know the difference. It’s not that he is doing an Ali impersonation but rather that UB40’s sound - created by more than 10 musicians, half of whom have been playing in this outfit for 45 years - is as much about reggae percussion and ska horns as it is about its lilting lyrics.
He is bolstered by another newbie, Gilly G, who has replaced Astro on toasting duty and together - at half the age of the original band members - they bring a youthfulness appropriate to the band’s inner-city brand of music.
On Elvis cover Can’t Help Falling in Love there is a certain yearning quality missing from the vocals but you would be hard pushed to spot the difference on Kingston Town, and on Red, Red Wine the effect is near-perfect with a fresh vitality.
That vitality is reflected in the band continuing to put out new albums. The announcement of a section of new stuff gets a groan from the audience but the energy with this new material shows they are more than a cash-in touring band. While we aren’t indulged with a night of unalloyed nostalgia the scent in the air suggests no one minds too much as UB40 make their ambition clear on the hookiest of those new numbers: Me Nah Leave Yet.