This three-way bet on the loopy power of opera is a five-star triumph

Il Trittico
Opera Australia, July 3.
Until July 19.
Reviewed by HARRIET CUNNINGHAM
★★★★★

Opera Australia’s new production of Il Trittico, Puccini’s final work, is a three-way, all-in bet on the power of opera. Three one-hour, one-act operas compress this loopy genre’s extravagant range and untrammelled expression into one hugely satisfying evening.

Il Tabarro, (The Cloak), takes place on a rusty old barge where Giorgetta, (a gutsy Olivia Cranwell) and Michele (played by Simon Meadows as an emotionally empty husk) are cobbling together a bleak life in the wake of the loss of their child. Glimpses of happiness elsewhere – from nostalgia, music, young love and friendship – do little to assuage the pain. Love is hard and, at times, Il Tabarro is hard to love. Thankfully, fine performances, especially from the Opera Australia Orchestra, find the warmth and colour that Giorgetta and Michele’s life lacks.

Viktor Antipenko as Luigi and Simon Meadows as Michele in Il Tabarro.Credit: Keith Saunders

After the unrelenting darkness of Il Tabarro, the second work in the triptych opens to a blaze of white light, Michael Hankin’s stark depiction of a convent – or is it an asylum? – populated by a company of nuns, all dressed in white. It is here that Sister Angelica (Lauren Fagan) has been condemned by her well-to-do family to live out her life, after a youthful crime of impropriety. News from home, delivered with a dour lack of empathy by her aunt (Angela Hogan), drives Sister Angelica to end her life, but not before she is transfigured by a divine vision.

After the gloom of Il Tabarro, Suor Angelica opens in a blaze of light.Credit: Keith Saunders

From the sublime to the ridiculous, Gianni Schicchi wraps up the evening with a comic palate cleanser. It’s a tale of a rich, dying patriarch, an avaricious family and a wily chancer (Simon Meadows, this time transformed into an ebullient Mr Fixit). No prizes for guessing how it ends, but en route we get to enjoy a torrent of gags and pratfalls, deftly choreographed by director Shaun Rennie and played out by an exuberant ensemble cast.

Gianni Schicchi, a comic palate cleanser, rounds out the operatic triptych.Credit: Keith Saunders

It’s Puccini’s subversive demonstration of everything that opera can do, from a scene-stealing child actor (Millie Price on first night) to the Mozartian scramble of ten people all talking at once to the heart-melting aria that no father could resist.

Il Trittico is a huge undertaking: three sets, more than 30 roles, and unlikely stories, all three of which veer towards the messy extremes of human emotion. Thankfully, the sum of these parts is immensely rewarding. While credit must go, ultimately, to Puccini for pulling off this operatic coup, this production is also powered by some stand out performances, not least from conductor Lidiya Yankovskaya and soprano Lauren Fagan, both making compelling debuts with Opera Australia.

Yankovskaya’s cool navigation through the minefield of Gianni Schicchi, and Fagan’s ecstatic final scene in Suor Angelica are high points. That, and the ultimate triple threat of Angela Hogan, who begins as a buoyant, salt-of-the-earth Frugola in Il Tabarro, chills as the bloodless Principessa in Suor Angelica, and then brings the house down as La Ciesca in Gianni Schicchi. These are just three standouts in a dazzling landscape that showcases some of Australia’s finest operatic talent.

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The Odd Couple
Theatre Royal, June 30.
Until July 28
Reviewed by JOHN SHAND
★★★★

More than any other Neil Simon play, The Odd Couple has passed into folklore. Given that it clocked up nearly 1000 performances in its initial mid-’60s Broadway run, spawned a hit film (with Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon), a TV series in the 1970s, and has enjoyed endless revivals around the world, you’d pretty much have to have had your head in a bucket to have missed it.

But in case there are some bucket-lovers among us, Oscar (Shane Jacobson) is a New York sports writer whose marriage has failed, and who lives a slovenly existence in an eight-room apartment, where he hosts a Friday night poker game. His best friend, Felix (Todd McKenney), is a TV news writer, whose own marriage implodes around the time the curtain goes up. Oscar tries to comfort the distraught Felix by telling him, “There’s a hundred thousand divorces a year. There must be something nice about it.”

(From left) Jamie Oxenbould, John Batchelor, Laurence Coy, Shane Jacobson, Anthony Taufa and Todd McKenney. Credit: Pia Johnson

With Felix homeless, Oscar invites him to stay. One giant blunder for friendship, one great a boon for comedy. Oscar, you see, likes being a slob, whereas Felix is so fixated on cleanliness that he’ll track a burning cigarette with an ashtray and a descending drink with a coaster. You can see why their wives left them, and why their flirtation with cohabitation is doomed.

Director Mark Kilmurry’s production reminds us Simon wasn’t just good at making us laugh; he was good at implying the heartache behind the laughter. His characters are so finely observed that, even though we giggle at their idiocy, they’re never without warmth, and when the playwright dares to flick the switch to the pathetic sadness of the human condition just for the barest moment, we find that we like these people we’re laughing at enough to feel for them.

Like music, playing comedy is all about rhythm, and Kilmurry has his eight actors nailing every syncopation with such precision it’s as though there’s an invisible conductor in the pit. And when the text hits a dry patch or the jokes show their age, the cast effortlessly picks up the slack. Just one pause was milked too long for its payoff.

Shane Jacobson (Oscar) and Todd McKenney (Felix) with Gwendolyn (Lucy Durack) and Cecily (Penny McNamee, far right).Credit: Pia Johnson

Jacobson catches all Oscar’s gag lines like he’s wearing a giant baseball mitt, and meanwhile ensures we love him, despite the epic boorishness. Initially McKenney seemed less at ease in Felix’s skin, and more inclined to ham to obtain the laughs, but that soon evolved until they became dream team casting.

A particular joy of this production is the care that’s been taken over the six minor roles. Consequently, these people build a complete world for Oscar and Felix to inhabit, rather just existing in a vacuum of absent wives and children. Penny McNamee is hilarious as Gwendolyn Pigeon, and Lucy Durack’s not far behind as her sister Cecily. Kilmurry has these two excitable English neighbours speaking in similar squeaky voices, and duetting in perfect timing and harmony in their amused or embarrassed vocal reactions. So just when we’ve become overused to Oscar and Felix’s grumpy bickering, the women completely turbocharge the comedy once more.

The opening scene, before we’ve even met Felix, is comparably funny, as Laurence Coy (Speed) Anthony Taufa (Murray), John Batchelor (Roy) and especially Jamie Oxenbould (Vinnie) sharply define the crazy characters in the weekly poker game. Then there are the classy design elements and the jazz delineating the scene transitions all icing a classic production of a comedy that ain’t going anywhere just yet.

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Counting and Cracking
Carriageworks
June 29
Until July 21
★★★★½

Longevity is rare for any Australian production, let alone one with a cast of 19 non-Anglo performers dealing with events in a country far away, and performed in several languages.

But this play’s continued success – as with Shankari Chandran’s 2022 novel Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens, which traverses similar terrain – demonstrates that a bold, cross-cultural tale can speak to a mainstream audience.

This is a welcome return of the Australian-Sri Lankan family epic, which premiered at the 2019 Sydney Festival.

Sukania Venugopal and Nipuni Sharada help unravel mysteries in Counting and Cracking. Credit: Pia Johnson

Since then, the production has toured to Adelaide, Melbourne and the UK, been showered with awards, and will move to New York in September.

At the centre of S. Shakthidharan’s play is the formidable Radha, who fled Sri Lanka alone and pregnant with her son in 1983. The Tamil woman doesn’t speak of the past. She’s too busy dealing with an air-conditioning man at her Pendle Hill flat. Meanwhile, her son, Siddhartha, revels in Coogee’s salty air and his budding romance with Lily, a Yolngu woman. But the past is about to come calling.

The play shifts nimbly between Sydney and Sri Lanka, unfolding over 50 years. The saga rewinds to events that triggered a civil war lasting 26 years and the arrival in Australia of fleeing Tamil refugees.

The play is tighter and more focused than five years ago, particularly the sense of rising panic conveyed in a series of telephone calls in the third act.

With seats configured around a catwalk stage, the audience sits close to the action. Dale Ferguson’s set has an appropriately make-shift feel, with few props beyond a chair and telephone. Performers at the edge of the stage simultaneously translate non-English dialogue.

Eamon Flack’s inventive Belvoir Theatre production is filled with memorable elements, from the exuberance of Sid and Lily’s beach outing to the wave of humanity seeking a safe shore on which to land. Iron gates that dominate the stage are used to effect as Villawood Detention Centre, the arms and torsos of detainees pressed against the bars.

There are strong performances from the two leads, Nadie Kammallaweera as the older Radha and Shiv Palekar as the endearing Siddhartha. Both appeared in the original cast.

Newcomer Radhika Mudaliyar is a standout as young Radha, conveying her strength and determination, while Abbie-lee Lewis as gentle Lily and Prakash Belawadi as firebrand Apah also impress.

This is a generous, warm-hearted production that combines big themes with richly detailed characters and underscores how easily the politics of division can tear apart a once-tolerant country.

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