The Marriage of Figaro by Mozart / Da Ponte

The Marriage of Figaro by Mozart / Da Ponte.  Co-Opera directed by Tessa Bremner,  Musical Director Brian Chatterton at The Street Theatre, Canberra, March 29-30, 2011.

Reviewed by Frank McKone
March 29

“Co-Opera was formed in 1990 with the express purpose of presenting opera in new and imaginative ways….”  Their aim is admirably achieved in this production of Figaro, passing through Canberra on its east coast 30 performance tour from Adelaide to Port Douglas.

The singing and acting was excellent throughout, though I make no bones about being home-town biassed in praising the performance of Karen Fitz-Gibbon.  She has just last year completed her Honours year at the Australian National University School of Music, and her Susanna was close to perfect.  Hers is the central role in Bremner’s approach to Lorenzo Da Ponte’s libretto: Fitz-Gibbon’s timing and characterisation made the whole play work dramatically.

Now, of course, I’m forced to admit that Tessa Bremner is a one-time Canberra Critics’ Circle Award winner – for a production of Amadeus.  All I can say is that it is good to see that our award predicted continuing success, especially since the value of critics is being questioned in the blogosphere.  (Follow this up in the current Currency House Platform Papers No. 27, April 2011: HELLO WORLD! Promoting the Arts on the Web by Robert Reid, and Alison Croggon’s blog ‘The return of the amateur critic’ at http://www.abc.net,au/unleashed/20038.html)

My reason for mentioning Bremner is that she was a successful stage play director who clearly sees this opera production not as a series of platforms for singers but as a drama of plot, thinking characters and emotion.  She has integrated all these elements into the wonderful effects that Mozart’s music creates, and presented the work on a smallish scale so that her audience can all feel personally part of the theatrical illusion.  The result is that all the social criticism inherent in the original libretto is made apparent.

And, it is important to say, Bremner is served very well by a small band, in this case spread across the auditorium floor in front of Row A, conducted in the traditional way by Chatterton at the continuo.

My only thought about the originality of the show concerns the following WikiLeak – sorry, Wikipedia entry: “It was Mozart who originally selected Beaumarchais' play and brought it to Da Ponte, who turned it into a libretto in six weeks, rewriting it in poetic Italian and removing all of the original's political references. In particular, Da Ponte replaced Figaro's climactic speech against inherited nobility with an equally angry aria against unfaithful wives. Contrary to the popular myth, the libretto was approved by the Emperor, Joseph II, before any music was written by Mozart.”

Watching the performance it is obvious that Joseph II didn’t realise that the satire was too subtle for all the political references to be removed, fortunately for us for it is indeed the way that the servants Figaro and Susanna treat their ‘noble’ bosses that makes the show relevant today (as of course it was especially when Beaumarchais’ original play was banned in France in the mid-1770s).  What Co-Opera might have done is to reinstate Beaumarchais’ ‘climactic speech against inherited nobility’, which could be done especially because Da Ponte’s Italian has already been translated into English for most of this production.

For me, Figaro’s tirade against unfaithful wives seemed very much out of place against the self-confidence and sensibility of the women, who take such a modern approach to the practicalities of dealing with rampant males.  Though it is true that at this point Figaro has misunderstood what Susanna has done, the good humour and loving nature of their relationship from the beginning is far too easily blighted in his attack.  It would make much more sense for him to take the nobility to task as they deserve at this point, and as Beaumarchais intended.

Otherwise originality was to the fore.  The use of Germanic English for all of the skulduggery and Romance Italian for the love songs was a beautiful way to make even more of the music than Mozart’s Austrian audience would have heard. The costumes, with beehive head-dresses, exaggerated commedia make-up and a dress sense appropriate for each class of character made for the intelligent comedy that this opera is.  At the same time the use of clear plastic costume overlays, dressing room walls and ‘mirrors’ was an exciting modern touch which worked very well to make the meaning of the play transparent.

I wish this production well on its journey travelling north.

An operatic gem

Mozart's 'The Marriage of Figaro'.
Co-Opera Inc, at The Street Theatre, March 29 and 30.

I describe this performance as a gem because it's small, but brilliant and glittering. Forget huge and lavish performances of 'grand opera' in world famous opera houses; Co-Opera is a touring company which has proved able to bring the best in opera to smaller stages and to country venues.

I found it totally delightful, from my first glimpse of the lighted set, a series of linked platforms with built-in lighting, to the performances of the singers, whose voice, costumes, movement, and acting came together to make a visual and aural experience to remember.

Since I am not a music critic but simply a lover of good theatre, I will leave detailed reviews to others. Suffice it to say that praise is due to the Director, the Musical Director, the Designer (not credited in the program) and the Lighting Director.
 
Malcolm Miller

A little glimpse of Chinese theatre...

No chance to catch more than a few glimpses of Chinese performance on an Asia Education Foundation tour this January (since not all teachers on such a tour have performing arts as their main focus) but they were fascinating glimpses.

You would not want to do any outdoor theatre in Beijing in winter. Luckily, unless you want to join outdoor dancing or singing groups in China (which, like swimming in holes cut in the ice of the canals, do happen…), theatre seems to take place indoors.

In order to get inside any public building like a theatre or a shop you have to fight your way past a couple of blanket-like panels in the doorway, ‘fight’ sometimes feeling a rather appropriate word in a country where the queue is not a custom and elbowing your way through crowds is the norm. The ‘blankets’ are there to keep the heat in; a very welcome thought in minus temperatures.

Lao She Tearoom is the place to see variety, although they also do Beijing opera. Upstairs inside the theatre revealed itself to be long and narrow, with lots of painted decoration and the audience at tables and a conventional stage at one end. We were up on a raised platform toward the back and visibility was a bit difficult what with waiters coming and going but that didn’t matter once the show got under way. While drinking copious amounts of tea we watched a succession of variety acts, ranging from some very delicate shadow puppets to long humorous songs, an adroit magician, some Chinese ‘stand up’, acrobatics and the ‘face changing’ act.

This last is quite puzzling. A performer in colourful robes and head dress changes opera ‘mask’ makeup in a flash, not revealing the secret even when coming right up to the tables. We could not figure it out. Quick silk mask changes? Face contortions to reveal a different makeup? Hugely skilled stuff.

Another night we went off to the acrobats. This time the theatre was a large conventional barn with an end on stage and pretty sensitive combinations of moving and fixed lighting (The real masters of this kind of lighting are probably the designers of the Siam Nirimit show in Bangkok but that’s another story.) Cheerfully skilful stuff, with all the usual routines including chair stacks and spinning plates and bicycles with multiple riders as well as large performing birds alarming the audience by flying across the auditorium. Unlike the Lao She show there seemed to be a much higher proportion of foreigners and expats in this audience.

The best of all, however, was the Beijing opera episode at the Huguang Guild Hall. Built in 1807, this exquisitely decorated theatre was where the Kuomintang was founded by Dr Sun Yat Sen in 1912. 

(A couple of years ago I found another thread of this story in the form of a Chinese cemetery up on the Thai-Lao border where some KMT soldiers settled after China became Communist)

The Huguang Guild Hall has an Elizabethan feeling to it, with balconies running round on three sides and a large canopied square stage thrusting out into the audience.  Once again it was tea and snacks as Monkey took the stage, the episode being the one where he steals from Heaven the peaches that grant immortality. Lively, full of fights and comedy and, despite our lack of Chinese, very understandable to people who had once watched a certain TV series…

And here he is…

Alanna Maclean

'Auntie Mame' - a brief review by Malcolm Miller

I write in tribute to Andrea Close, who has, over some years, brought me a great deal of with her acting in a number of notable performances. 

'Auntie Mame' , from Free Rain Theatre Company, is at the Courtyard Studio from Friday March 25 to Sunday April 10.  Andrea, one of a cast of sixteen, gave a star performance as Mame in a show that's perhaps more familiar as the musical, "Mame'. 

This is a 'feel-good' show, and there are laughs and humour which contrast nicely with the hard times of the Depression which cast down many of the characters.  It's quite lengthy, and the necessity for frequent, clunky, scene changes is a little disturbing, and probably a bit hard on the patience of the audience.  I found it so.

I was favourably impressed by the work of Ben Burgess as Young Pat.  He presented with style and presence, and his voice put some older members of the cast to shame, with every word heard.  Patrick as a young man later in the play was played by Lachlan Ruffy.   Veteran player Jasan Savage got smiles for his playing of, among others, the ageing Mother Burnside.  Lauren Bradley was a wonderfully catty southern belle as Sally Cato.  One hopes to see more of her.  The cast was too large for me to write something about everybody!

If you want a good night at the theatre, with some excellent acting and plenty of laughs that you can leave with a smile, I recommend 'Aunty Mame'.

PARTENOPE

Opera Australia.
Sydney Opera House until 31st March.

Reviewed by Bill Stephens

Staging a Handel opera seems to be a very effective way of clearing out an opera house, judging by the progressively greater number of empty seats after each interval at the performance I attended of Opera Australia's production of "Partenope".

Perhaps those audience members were remembering director Christopher Alden's last effort at the Opera House, the execrable "Tosca", and had decided that as they could'nt make head nor tail of the proceedings onstage they might as well dash home in the hope of finding something more edifying on the TV.

Actually, those of us who had attended the entertaining free pre-show talk by assistand director, Tama Matheson, were reminded that in the eighteenth century, when Handel wrote this opera, the presentation style was very much different to how opera is presented now, and that "Partenope" was not really written as a narrative opera. Therefore Christopher Alden and his co-director Peter Littlefield had devised this concept to make it more interesting. So, Voila! armed with this knowledge, I decided, after the first act, to simply stop trying to match the libretto with the shenanigans on stage and let Handel's glorious music wash over me as the cast went through their directorial hoops, and...... the results certainly were more entertaining.

While "Partenope" isn't the most accessible or sensible of the Handel operas - (Come to think of it... Is there such a thing as a sensible Handel Opera?) - it does contain some glorious music, here, beautifully played by an orchestra which achieved exactly the correct sound and balance under Christian Curnyn, and this production does have a superb ensemble of singers who do the music proud,  headed by a very game Emma Mathews, as Partenope, with Kanen Breen (Emilio), Christopher Field (Armindo), Jacqueline Dark (Rosmira), Richard Alexander (Ormonte), and Sian Pendry, who at the performance I attended, was replacing an indisposed Catherine Carby, as Partenope's lover, Arsace.

Set in the late twenties, in a decadent world of stark white apartments, Man Ray photography and sparkly cocktail dresses, the production contains many undeniably memorable moments. Indeed images of Emma Mathews, outfitted in top hat and tails, energectically seducing Christopher Field while firing of sparkling cadenzas in all directions, Sian Pendry sitting on a lavatory shredding endless rolls of toilet paper, and Kanen Breen delivering an intricate aria while performing some amazingly outrageous yoga moves, will stay with me for a long time.There are some genuinely funny bits of business, which,to their credit, the cast embraced with enthusiasm and spirit while still managing to sing beautifully, in fact, even sublimely, in the case of the meltingly lustrous solo with which Emma Mathews closed the second act.

But while I rather enjoyed the night out, please Opera Australia, next time you produce a Handel opera, can we have a production closer to what Handel intended?

(This review was broadcast in "Dress Circle" on Artsound FM 92.7)

Doctor Zhivago

Lyric Theatre, Star City, Sydney until 2nd April
Her Majesty's Theatre, Melbourne, from April 12.
Lyric Theatre, QPAC, Brisbane from July 6

Reviewed by Bill Stephens

If your reason for seeing "Doctor Zhivago" is to experience Anthony Warlow playing the title role then you would be wise to confirm that he is actually performing when buying your tickets. At the performance I attended neither Warlow, nor his Lara, Lucy Maunder, were in the show. The brave understudies, Anton Berezin and Belinda Wollaston, had to overcome an intitially cool response from the disappointed audience to eventually win well-deserved cheers by their curtain calls. Bravo!

Based on the sprawling Boris Pasternak novel, "Doctor Zhivago" is a stirring musical which tells an epic story and demands concentration to absorb all the twists and turns of the plot. Regardless of who is playing the main roles however, there is much to enjoy.

Not the least being how cleverly director Des McAnuff uses Michael Scott-Mitchell's strikingly mobile set to propel the action seamlessly through scenes of lavish balls, weddings, assassinations, murders, suicides and yearning lovers to finally pull all the threads together. There's Teresa Negroponte's lavish period costumes, and the many fine performances from a cast which includes Peter Carroll, Bartholomew John, Trisha Noble, Shaun Murphy, Martin Crewes and Natalie Gamsu.

But mostly there's Lucy Simon's superbly tuneful score which includes at least two lovely songs destined to become classics when the show eventually finds its way to Broadway, and you will have been among the first to have heard them.

(This review appears in the March 24-30th edition of "City News")

42ND STREET

Canberra Philharmonic Society.
Erindale Theatre until 26th March

Reviewed by Bill Stephens

If tap-dancing is your thing then this is the show for you. In Jim McMullen's entertaining production of David Merrick's homage to the Broadway musical, it's the dancers who steal the show in a series of exuberant, well-staged dance numbers choreographed by Amy Fitzpatrick.

"42nd Street" is jam-packed with theatrical cliches including the over-bearing director struggling to get his show opened, the ageing star who breaks her ankle just before opening night, and the talented young chorine who steps in at the last moment and saves the show. It's also crammed with a string of Harry Warren's most  delightfully tuneful songs, enthusiastically performed by the large on-stage ensemble augmented by a team of singers in the orchestra pit and all accompanied by a taut, tight and terrific band under the direction of Colin Fischer.

Heading the strong cast, Ian Croker is compelling as the Broadway director, his performance blemished only by his overwrought rendering of the title song in the finale. Anne Timperley, glamorous and devious as the ageing star, Adrian Flor, suave and brilliantined as her leading man, and Jordan Kelly as the ever-watchful dance director, all impress with strong performances. Kate Tricks also contributes a fine comedic characterisation which will be even funnier when she overcomes her disconcerting tendency to drop her voice at the end of sentences.

Despite being miscast in the pivotal role of the young chorine who steps in to save the show, Ele Wilcher gives a plucky, appealing performance, however in the show's climax, the least successful of the production numbers, she displays neither the vocal strength nor stage presence to make the premise convincing.

However this show is all about the singing and dancing so don't miss it.

(An edited version of this review appears in the March 17-23 edition of "City News".)