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Key points
- THEATRE Zahra Newman is transcendent as Billie Holiday
- DANCE Stephanie Lake’s Manifesto returns
- JAZZ The Melbourne International Jazz Festival kicks off with Lisa Simone
- CHORAL The Song Company explores the music of exiles
THEATRE
In the Club, Patricia Cornelius ★★★★
Theatre Works, until November 11
Some of the year’s best theatre has faced down sexual assault in the wake of the #MeToo movement.
Michelle Perera, Eva Seymour and Brigid Gallacher in In the Club, depicting a fateful night on the town.Credit: James Reiser.
Suzie Miller cross-examined the problem’s legal dimension with acclaimed monodrama Prima Facie, in which a high-flying criminal barrister becomes a complainant. Emmanuelle Mattana’s Trophy Boys portrayed an adolescent debating team from an all-boys school, exposing misogyny under feminist rhetoric. Now Patricia Cornelius tackles the AFL – the sexual abuse of women by players, and the cultural forces at play behind it.
A dramatist as fearless and uncompromising as Cornelius is a ferocious adversary. She writes with an energy, precision and unfailing instinct that match the genius of an elite athlete. And nobody could accuse her of playing the man: Cornelius sets her sights squarely on a lack of accountability, a culture of entitlement and impunity, and group dynamics that encourage victim-blaming and the demeaning treatment of women.
In the Club unfolds from the perspectives of three women at a nightclub popular with footy stars. Annie (Eva Seymour), Ruby (Michelle Perera), and Olivia (Brigid Gallacher) have disparate attitudes to gender and sex, but by the end of the play they’ve all shared something no woman should have to endure.
Brigid Gallacher and Darcy Kent in a charmingly awkward seduction.Credit: James Reiser
Short monologues explore the socialisation of gender through character, before shifting to a fateful night on the town.
The sports-mad, 16-year-old Annie disdains girly-girls and sexual wiles. She much prefers to talk to her heroes about the minutiae of the game and is shocked to find she’s not one of the boys in the worst possible way.
In contrast, Ruby loves sex unashamedly, though an early experience has left her streetwise and alert. She shrugs off the double standard that slut-shames women while men are applauded for being promiscuous. And time might fray her sexual allure, as the veteran player who keeps trying it on with her cruelly points out, but it will also make him expendable, yesterday’s man.
Olivia, meanwhile, grew up surrounded by women and disliked boys. She’s diffident around men, wary of romance, and knows nothing about footy. A charmingly awkward seduction leads to great sex, but in a devastating flourish Cornelius shows how even “good blokes” are complicit in a culture that can unleash barbarism the moment they leave the room.
All three performers embody strong and complex characters, investing a perceptive script with presence and humanity. Darcy Kent, Damien Harrison and Ras-Samuel don’t caricature the players, either: these are men, not monsters, at least when they’re not moving in packs.
Clubland’s isolating hedonism pervades Kitan Petkovski’s production though lighting, set, video design and Jaguar Jonze’s original electro-pop songs. Employing musical theatre is risky on this subject, especially with Cornelius at the top of her game, and it works best with Seymour as the dauntless Annie, whose half-spoken, half-sung defiance cannot be silenced, nor her love of the game shaken.
Reviewed by Cameron Woodhead
MUSIC
Sibelius and Prokofiev: Love and Resistance ★★★★
Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Hamer Hall, October 27
Two pleasant discoveries were forthcoming from this Melbourne Symphony Orchestra triple bill: one, a new talent, and the other, a new concerto.
Making her Australasian debut this season, French-born, British-trained conductor Chloe van Soeterstede impressed with a genial but incisive manner that reaped consistent musical rewards.
At the centre of the concert book-ended by the first symphonies of Prokofiev and Sibelius came Elena Kats-Chernin’s Sarenka Concerto for solo violin, solo cello and orchestra, a substantial six-movement work, written in an engaging and accessible style.
Celebrating the life and legacy of Sara Weis, who moved to Australia after being a resistance fighter in World War II, the score is influenced by minimalist tropes often flavoured with vivid percussion timbres and interesting harmonic shifts. Kats-Chernin evokes the various chapters of Weis’ life with empathy and good humour, even incorporating a hedonistic tango in the appropriately named fourth movement Good Times.
Occasionally, the concerto’s textures could have been more transparent to favour the projection of the fine, hard-working soloists, concertmaster Dale Barltrop and associate principal cello Rachael Tobin.
There was no lack of transparency in the sharply etched account of Prokofiev’s Classical Symphony where van Soeterstede was at pains to elicit utmost balletic elegance along with a fastidious observance of dynamics. Offsetting the downy string sound in the larghetto, the effervescent finale brought a perfectly poised conclusion.
Under van Soeterstede’s galvanising personality, the Sibelius received a mercurial performance, enhanced by the luxury of Barltrop joining guest concertmaster Sophie Rowell at the head of the violins. Philip Arkinstall’s eerie opening clarinet solo was perfectly judged and the long trajectory of the work well paced; the ardent andante and lightning-fast scherzo led to a tumultuous climax.
Having discovered a powerful communicator of scores new and old, van Soeterstede’s career will definitely be one to watch.
Reviewed by Tony Way
THEATRE
Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill
★★★★★
Melbourne Theatre Company, Arts Centre Melbourne, until December 2
A transcendent tribute to Billie Holiday, Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar & Grill invites us into an intimate live performance near the end of the jazz legend’s career.
Zahra Newman: Lady Day lives again in this tour de force.Credit: Matt Byrne
You need no small measure of audacity to channel a star as original as Holiday, and prodigious vocal and acting talent to be able to transfigure the art of impersonation from cheap trick into miraculous resurrection. Zahra Newman pulls off a rare feat. Lady Day lives again in this tour de force.
It’s a transfixing performance, drawn from the seemingly inextricable strands of Holiday’s musical brilliance and her anguished biography.
Rita Dove might’ve said it best in her poem Canary:
“Billie Holiday’s burned voice
had as many shadows as lights,
a mournful candelabra against a sleek piano,
the gardenia her signature under that ruined face.”
Billie’s “burned voice” was wrested from a world of pain. She endured poverty and child abuse, discrimination and domestic violence, heroin addiction and imprisonment, and she died from cirrhosis at the age of 44, not long after the performance given in this play.
Zahra Newman as Billie Holiday ignites the memory of that burned voice.Credit: Matt Byrne
Newman sculpts a grim and moving portrayal of the fragility under the formidable voice. Her Holiday is jonesing for a fix barely halfway through and eventually nips into the wings to hit up, leaving her jazz trio – Kym Purling (piano), Dan Witton (bass), Edward York (drums) – to improvise a cover.
Anecdotes from her life are riffed upon with a loose, jazz-inspired coherence, and songs take flight when words flail. A carousing, devil-may-care vibe – which sees Billie drifting through cabaret tables singing Gimme a Pigfoot and a Bottle of Beer – yields to defiant melancholy and bruising songs of love and grief.
Lyrics often shine a light on oppressions condemned to silence. Freedom is given a cynical wink in Ain’t Nobody’s Business, which opens with a woman defending her abusive partner, and money’s heartless creed provokes a scathing lament in God Bless the Child.
And the immortal Strange Fruit – a necromantic threnody composed in rage and sorrow at the lynching of coloured men in the American South – is sung here with devastating force in memory of Billie’s father, who died after racism denied him timely hospital treatment.
As Billie Holliday, Newman sings with devastating force.Credit: Matt Byrne
Charismatic whimsy fortifies the star against agonising social and personal demons. She forges a likeable, dissolute sort of bond with the audience, and at one point, her dog makes a cute cameo. But the most riveting moments come through Newman’s ability to ignite the memory of that burned voice – those notes of flame that lick the air before diving back into the fire.
Conventional wisdom would have you believe Billie Holiday inimitable, so I’m not sure how Newman does it, but then, no explanation could fully account for the inspiration the star found in life’s cruelties, either. “If you can’t be free,” as Dove’s ode to her ends, “be a mystery”.
Reviewed by Cameron Woodhead
DANCE
Manifesto, Stephanie Lake Company ★★★★
Arts Centre Melbourne, until November 5
Another opening night and another standing ovation. Just like the audience at last year’s Melbourne premiere, the audience for the first night of the return season of Stephanie Lake’s Manifesto rose instantly from their seats to applaud this most extravagant excursion into effervescence.
Stephanie Lake’s Manifesto: Sections of exuberant defiance run into scenes of comic nonchalance.
Manifesto is a work for nine dancers and nine drummers. The latter sit enthroned behind their rock kits on podiums overlooking the dance area. The set, designed by Charles Davis and lit by Bosco Shaw, is a Hollywood dream of red curtains on red curtains with lights blazing in every direction.
Composer Robin Fox, who is also Lake’s partner, is part of the ensemble of musicians. Together they alternate between booming unison backbeats and whiplash interludes of individual percussive virtuosity. It’s a case of give the drummer some and then some more and more again.
It’s a propulsive, headbanging tour de force. The dancers in their white rags – designed by Paula Levis – respond with explosive jump turns that corkscrew in midair and power kicks. They punch and shake and dive headlong across the stage. It’s a performance that is nothing if not spirited.
Sometimes it can feel like the dancers are mere embellishment and whooping hype squad for the nonet of skin bashers. But there is something attractive about the casual ease with which Lake runs sections of exuberant defiance into scenes of comic nonchalance.
There are two downbeat solos for dancer Samantha Hines that open moody gaps in the hour-long performance, around which the rest of the work builds. In these moments Hines is choked and suffocated, gripping her throat and caught in the vertical death of tensed muscle.
One of the difficulties with Manifesto is that although much of the choreography has the vivacity of and charm of populist spectacle, the dramaturgy is not as intricately shaped or as consistently energised as it might be. After an hour, it all seems a bit samey.
Stephanie Lake and her company have had a busy 18 or so months since this work premiered. The much-admired Colossus has continued to tour, bobbing up in Argentina earlier this year. Her company launched a fine showcase series for emerging choreographers.
The Manifesto set is a Hollywood dream of red curtains on red curtains with lights blazing in every direction.
And, to cap it off, Australian Ballet artistic director David Hallberg invited Lake to adapt Circle Electric – a short work created for the touring company – into a full-length concert piece that will debut next year alongside Harald Lander’s evergreen one-act ballet Études.
In the meantime, Manifesto has toured to great acclaim. And why not? This is a super-stimulated and deliberately excessive pageant that gives form to a collective yearning for emancipation, with an exhilarating ambition to connect with the greatest possible audience.
Reviewed by Andrew Fuhrmann
JAZZ
The Hot 8 Brass Band, Cheryl Durongpisitkul, Ingrid Jensen, Lisa Simone, Kendrick Scott and others
Melbourne International Jazz Festival, until October 29
As I stepped off the tram at Federation Square on Saturday afternoon, curious onlookers were peering over Princes Bridge to watch the joyful spectacle unfolding below them. The Hot 8 Brass Band and Horns of Leroy were leading a New Orleans-style street parade along the banks of the Yarra, gathering revellers as they strode through Southbank like exuberant Pied Pipers.
The Hot 8 Brass Band opened the Melbourne International Jazz Festival like exuberant Pied Pipers.Credit: Will Hamilton-Coates
The parade eventually wound its way to Fed Square, where the musicians strutted onto the stage as their funk-fuelled horns and percussion compelled the audience to dance.
This delightfully entertaining show was one of many events taking place across town during the opening weekend of this year’s Melbourne International Jazz Festival, emphasising the inclusiveness and accessibility of the festival program.
Cheryl Durongpisitkul at theMelbourne International Jazz Festival: Dissonance, melancholy and hope.Credit: Max Roux
The official opening concert was at Jazzlab on Friday night, when composer-saxophonist Cheryl Durongpisitkul premiered a powerful new suite, I Still Miss You. Divided into six movements, this deeply personal work explored trauma, loss, grief and healing with fearlessness and aching vulnerability. Durongpisitkul led a superb 12-piece ensemble through each intricate movement, variously conjuring moods of quiet unease, chaotic dissonance, tender melancholy and, finally, hope.
At the same venue the following night, Canadian trumpeter Ingrid Jensen took to the stage with a band featuring several local musicians she’d met just hours earlier. Her admiration for her onstage companions (Andrea Keller, Stephen Magnusson, Sam Anning and Felix Bloxsom) was palpable, and their ability to deftly interpret her compositions, gestures and body language allowed her to focus purely on the music. Her marvellously expressive trumpet issued bold exclamation marks, vigorous sweeps and introspective whispers, augmented by imaginative pedal and breath effects.
Lisa Simone displayed awe-inspring power at Hamer Hall.Credit: Will Hamilton-Coates
On Sunday afternoon, a sold-out Hamer Hall testified to the enduring legacy of Nina Simone, with a concert featuring the late singer’s daughter Lisa. Simone’s voice has a lighter, clearer tone than that of her mother, but she can dig into a phrase with bluesy vigour and sustain a single note with awe-inspiring power. Her interpretations of Nina’s songs somehow lacked fire in the early part of the show, but the energy and impact built as the concert progressed. Simone was at her most passionate singing her own song Finally Free, where she hinted at her desire to shrug off the burden of her musical inheritance.
Fire and passion were in abundant supply at Chapel Off Chapel later that evening, thanks to drummer Kendrick Scott and his virtuosic quintet. All five musicians are part of the acclaimed SFJAZZ Collective – also appearing at the festival – but this was an opportunity for Scott to showcase his compositional skills as well as his dazzling artistry at the kit. Creating visceral propulsion on some numbers, understated accompaniment on others, he beamed with pleasure as his remarkable colleagues brought his music to vivid, pulsating life.
Reviewed by Jessica Nicholas
MUSIC
Songs From A Strange Land ★★★★
The Song Company, Trinity College Chapel, October 23
Four hundred years may have passed since the death of composer William Byrd, but his experience as a Catholic outsider in Protestant England has left an enduring musical legacy. This legacy formed the impetus for an absorbing exploration of the music of exiles sung with polished commitment by the six members of The Song Company and guest director Christopher Watson.
The Song Company: Intricate textures and plangent depths.Credit: Christopher Hayles
Setting a mournful mood, Byrd’s dark-hued Tristis et anxietas brought forth richly grained tone from the lower voices, complementing contemporary Australian expressions of dispossession in Paul Stanhope’s Longing and Joseph Twist’s How Shall We Sing in a Strange Land?
Stanhope and Twist each in their own way harness the intimacy of unaccompanied singing to telling emotional effect; their intricate textures intriguing the ear. In a similar vein, I want to live by American minimalist David Lang added another element of yearning to belong.
The plangent depths of Ye sacred muses, Byrd’s heartfelt tribute to his mentor Thomas Tallis were mirrored by the intense, post-modern harmonic spaces of Roxanna Panufnik’s Kyrie after Byrd. An enviable vocal blend in these works also served the harmonic richness of two works by Gabriel Jackson: In all his works and I shall gaze upon you.
Some light relief came with a simple but stylish account of Ah Robin, Gentle Robin by William Cornysh sung by the upper voices (Susannah Lawergren, Amy Moore and Jessica O’Donoghue), while the male voices (Timothy Reynolds, Hayden Barrington, James Fox and Watson) revelled in Pelle Gudmunsen-Holmgreen’s whimsically risque tale of courtly love, You and I and Amyas II.
Byrd’s monumental Tribue Domine set the seal on this satisfying program that made an excellent case for the wide-ranging appeal to heart and head of fine choral music delivered by a professional ensemble. May ensembles like The Song Company continue to flourish.
Reviewed by Tony Way
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