The United Ukrainian Ballet. Adelaide Festival Theatre. 9 Nov 2022
The program notes start with a heart-felt and eloquent message from the producers Andrew Guild and Simon Bryce. They remark that “Before the dancers of The United Ukrainian Ballet even step upon the stage today they have triumphed. ….. As we present and perform Swan Lake, tragedies continue to unfold in Ukraine. We pray for a just end to the war. In working on this project, the gravity of the situation rarely leaves us. However today we celebrate. Today we dance.”
The United Ukrainian Ballet was formed barely six months ago from displaced Ukrainian dancers, and this begs the question why would they tour at all and why Swan Lake rather than something else? Perhaps it is because Swan Lake is one of the most popular and best known ballets ever to have graced a stage. Perhaps it is because the essence of the storyline is the triumph of good over evil. Perhaps it is because Swan Lake has political significance in Russia: it has been broadcast on Soviet-era radio and television at various times in the 1980s to point to the death of leaders in advance of any official word from the Kremlin. We can only hope. Perhaps it is for all these reasons, but whatever the reason, this evening’s opening night performance in the Adelaide Festival Theatre was indeed a triumph.
The storyline of Swan Lake has been tinkered with over the years to include a range of endings, and so for this production to use the ‘they live happily ever after’ conclusion was perhaps wise. The production was a joyous, beautiful, and stirring display of humanity at its best, and the final curtain call, at which immeasurable national pride and inspiring defiance was on full display, is something that will live in the hearts and minds of the emotional and cheering audience for a long time to come.
This reviewer is far from being an aficionado of dance and technique. Indeed, differentiating between a pirouette and a fouetté is a personal struggle, and the difference between a pas de trois and pas de quatre is just about the numbers, isn’t it? What this reviewer can say, unequivocally, is that one cannot help but be impressed with the beauty and athleticism on display from the dancers. Kateryna Chebykina in the dual roles of Odette and Odile is grace and beauty personified, as she breathes individuality into both characters. Oleksii Kniazkov dances Prince Siegfried alongside her and convincingly portrays the lonely royal who must marry for the good of the state rather than for love. Kniazkov is regal but also appropriately boyish when he is first smitten by the sight of Odette. Chebykina and Kniazkov are perfect together, and their duets are a highlight of the production.
Oleksiy Grishun plays Rothbart with great menace and guile. Although he is smaller in body compared to Kniazkov, his strength of characterisation threatens to diminish all those around him.
But no one on stage eclipses the Jester, nimbly performed by Pavlo Zurnadzhi with great humour and presence. In the great tradition of Falstaff, the Jester’s antics and insolence is tolerated by the court, and Zurnadzhi imbues the role with comical arrogance has he leaps and scampers his way around the stage, and encourages the audience to applaud, but he didn’t need to!
Ganna Surmina as the Queen and Viktor Lytvynenko as the Tutor dance their roles with assuredness and dignity.
The ‘signature’ dances of Swan lake are performed with great style and skill, and delight the appreciative audience who react with spontaneous applause.. The Dance of the Little Swans, danced by Anastasiia Bakum, Polina Dzhura, Alvina Krout and Daria Manoilo, is just beautiful. They dance with precision but also with tenderness and innocence. The Pas de Trois in Act 1 is performed by Daria Manoilo, Nikita Potapchuk and Vasylysa Nykyforova, and it too meets expectations with exquisite lines, balance, and poise. A joy to behold. The Big Swans are elegantly and strongly danced by Ella Mansford and Lara Paraschiv.
Also impressive is the corps de ballet, and their performances of the Spanish, Hungarian and Neapolitan dances, and the Mazurka, brim with life and joie de vivre.
This is a very traditional production of Swan Lake. The sumptuous sets comprise painted back drops that are richly detailed. Pleasingly, for this reviewer, not a giant LCD screen is in evidence! The costumes are also traditional and beautifully constructed with a rich palette of fabrics and finishes. On a less positive note, the company danced to a recorded soundtrack of Tchaikovsky’s iconic score, but it lacked dynamic balance and was at times languid. To the credit of the dancers, the absence of a conductor in front of a live orchestra largely did not matter, with perhaps the exception of several of the adagio routines in which perfect synchronisation of movement was occasionally lacking.
This production is a triumph of the human spirit, and it is also great art. Igone Jongh, the artistic leader of the company, has succeeded in realising her vision, and the dancers of the company have our admiration.
Brava!
Kym Clayton
When: 9 to 13 Nov
Where: Festival Theatre
Bookings: premier.ticketek.com.au
OzAsia Festival. State Theatre Company South Australia. Dunstan Playhouse. 8 Nov 2022
Playwright Michelle Law says she is surprised this Chinese-restaurant, kitchen-sink comedy is showing such longevity. Now it has opened in Adelaide, one does not share the surprise. This is a cross-cultural, racial-identity, intergenerational romp. It works very nicely in a festival celebrating Asia and cultural understanding.
It’s all about the Wong family in their Chinese restaurant, depicted onstage with a broad set of classic Chinese iconography, with metal stairway leading to upstairs rooms where the family lives.
The family is Pearl, a recently divorced tiger mum, and daughters Zoe, a talented violinist, and Mei in the throes of the last year of school. Law develops the sense of cloying Chinese domestica and racial stereotypes before expanding the plot to deal with more complex issues of the Australian male, sex and law. More stereotypes - but that is the whole point and it is thrown to the audience in a strident emotional roller coaster. Not all of the humour hits home, but the sense of intimacy and understanding of the single-mum battler family warms the old heart cockles. And there’s a bit of karaoke, therein, as well. They’re good singers and clearly relish the fun of it all. Oddly, when the actresses demonstrate that they can reach an Australia’s-Got-Talent-style high note, the theatre audience goes nuts and one ponders the nature of modern appreciation.
Indeed, there are some eloquent dramatic moments in this play far more deserving of acclaim. For instance, there’s the scene with Pete or is it Paul, when discussing who has rights to decisions over a woman’s body. Allan Lyra Chang is the only male in the cast and he has a really notable stage presence; an actor worth looking out for. The other males are played by Kristen O’Dwyer and Kathryn Adams who are doubling and tripling up from their roles as the white friends of Zoe and Mae. They are the high comic relief in the play in each context with some nice satirical characterisations. Juanita Navas-Nguyen delivers very capably the older daughter, Zoe, the girl who has had to carry family responsibility and fulfil family expectations, ever in search of where she may fit in to Australian society. Elvy-Lee Quici depicts the long-suffering young sister, Mae. It is a role which explains a lot about how it feels to be the only Asian girl in a big Aussie school.
Indeed, the play itself very explicitly exposes the underbelly of the Asian immigrant experience with Fiona Choi making a very rich and satisfying (Chinese) meal of the lead role, the brave matriarch forging the family path through the rocky road of finance, identity, and cultural tradition. One cheers for her, weeps for her, and believes in her.
The action ticks along efficiently under Nescha Jelk’s direction, with an interesting set and fun costumes from Ailsa Paterson plus nifty lighting from Chris Petridis. There is only Andrew Howard’s quirky soundscape left to ponder.
For, indeed, if there is one thing in which this play succeeds with only the odd burst of didacticism, it is in the truthful telling of the Asian cultural experience in Australia today.
Samela Harris
When: 4 to 19 Nov
Where: Dunstan Playhouse
Bookings: premier.ticketek.com.au
STARC Productions. Holden Street Theatres. 3 Nov 2022
A game of counterpoised views and secret needs, within a game of ‘truth’.
This fascinating dance of psychology plays out between two former jurors, Anna (Stefanie Rossi) and Mitchell (Marc Clement), two years after a hung jury murder trial. Anna’s clear, long-held, needy obsession with Mitchell is quietly disturbing. Mitchell’s uneasy acquiescence to this is equally troubling. The luxury Singapore apartment booking is his.
Their reminiscing replay of the trial runs parallel to that of their relationship during the trial.
There is a huge psychological and emotional hole these two seem desperate to fill. The outcome of the trial, for both. For Anna especially, the truth of Mitchell as a guiding light of a traumatic experience.
It starts to get messy the more evasive Mitchell gets and the more questioning Anna becomes. Something is wrong here. The verdict as they see it is at stake. They, as people to each other, is also in question.
Director Tony Knight’s production succeeds in building an almost unbearable tension in the space between the characters, but it falters in scene break blackouts which confuse, rather than double down on that tremendous undercurrent.
There are moments the equity of play between characters stiffens rather than flows. The fault is quickly rectified, but leaves a mark nonetheless.
Despite this, and a somewhat ordinary lighting design, this production does the job of attacking playwright Suzie Miller’s essential thesis. What happens when you reconsider a verdict in a life and death trial?
David O’Brien
When: 2 to 12 Nov
Where: Holden Street Theatres
Bookings: holdenstreettheatres.com
The Metropolitan Musical Theatre Co of SA. Arts Theatre. 22 Oct 2022 Matinee
For a bit of kicking-up-the-heels song and dance, The Arts Theatre has become the place. Everyone is doing musicals and rather well, considering they are all from the unfunded “theatre of love”.
Guys and Dolls, based on a sweetly corny old Damon Runyan tale with music and lyrics by Frank Loesser, is about sleazy New York gamblers and the women they love. Wheeler dealer Nathan Detroit has been engaged to Adelaide for fourteen years and is still trying to get out of tying the knot. King of the wins, Sky Masterson doesn’t want a bar of skirt until Nathan bets him he can’t win a Salvation Army girl. There’s a swathe of great old familiar songs and, because Adelaide is a showgirl, some spirited hoofing by vivacious chorus girls. And, since the whole thing is set in the 50s, there are fabulous frocks in vivid fabrics.
The Met has pulled together a huge orchestra and, under musical director Jacqui Maynard, has achieved lovely sound balance between accompaniment and singers.
Director Rebecca Kemp has designed economical but very effective sets with a good smattering of bling and, in a glory of nostalgia, a simply wonderful old city newsstand - just as we once used to have in the streets of Adelaide. All the ingredients are there along with a very large and well-rehearsed cast.
The show starts a little hesitantly as the characters and plot are established in Runyonland but, by interval, it is rocking the stage and the audience is alive with amusement at the silly stereotypical characters, the hardened crims of New York and Chicago and their obsession with playing craps.
Robin Schmelzkopf, looking amazing in his black and white shoes, carries the character load as the irredeemable Nathan and his interactions with the poor, hapless Adelaide are effectively exasperating. Sadly, this fabulous singer, has only one significant song in the show, the duet Sue Me, but he is gorgeous. And so is Adelaide, played with lovely Broadway expertise by Selena Britz. The pairing of Skye, played by Daniel Fleming and Sarah, by Chloe Dunstan, comes close, but no cigar, albeit lovely Dunstan does a delicious drunk scene and a snazzy Marry the Man Today duet with Britz. The n’er do well trio of Nicely-Nicely, Benny, and Rusty steal the show in a few scenes and, embodied by Ben Todd, Thomas Sheldon, and Joel Amos, come up with terrific harmonies. Amos also shines in the Cuban dance number. Notable amid the large supporting cast is promising young actor Maxwell Wigham as Lt Brannigan. He has a fine presence and we look forward to seeing more of his work. Adam Schultz, Dermot O’Boyle, Andrew Pettigrew, and Brad Martin are marvellously mean mobsters contrasting with Barry Hill as the simpering grandad Salvo, Arvid Abernathy, while Eve McMillan shines forth as the General.
And there we have it - another burst of good natured retro at The Arts.
Samela Harris
When: 21 to 29 Oct
Where: Arts Theatre
Bookings: metmusicals.com.au
Red Phoenix Theatre. Holden Street Theatres. 20 Oct 2022
Jury duty is a serious business, never more so than for audiences of Terror at Holden Street Theatres.
German fighter pilot Major Lars Koch is on trial for shooting down a planeload of innocent people in order to save tens of thousands of other innocent people gathered in a football stadium for a big international match. Is he a murderer or a saviour?
It’s a classic philosophic dilemma and here, by wonderful Red Phoenix, it plays out as a courtroom drama written by controversial criminal lawyer and playwright, Ferdinand von Schirach.
Terrorists have hijacked the passenger plane and say they intend to crash it into the stadium. So, in shooting down the plane, Koch killed 164 people but saved many others. But on whose orders did he do it? Did he have the right to act on his own judgement? Was that murder? What other options may there have been? Where is the moral ground?
Audience members are ticketed with “Guilty” and “Not Guilty” tickets and must listen to the evidence and the arguments of prosecution and defence and then, using those tickets, anonymously indicate their decision.
To this end, designer Kate Prescott has created a magnificently impressive and formal set, the judge being highly elevated above the stage in a judicial box scarred by the sign of cracking. The cracking follows through onto the back wall and it is suggested that the courtroom itself is in a place of major external disruption. Defence and prosecution tables flank the towering judge and, beneath her, also a witness table and a court reporter. A sour-faced security man lurks, ready for anything, even just a new jug of water. And much water is consumed by the protagonists as the play moves loquaciously forwards. This is definitely the thinking theatre-goers’ theatre. It is a work previously unseen in this city, which is the Red Phoenix policy. It also is a work much vaunted in the rest of the world.
Red Phoenix has a pretty slick track record and this production keeps right up with it under the seasoned direction of Brant Eustice with Tracey Walker. Ostensibly simple in structure, it is a play which rests on impeccable timing and faultless focus. It is a very tough script, a daunting learning piece for the actors and extremely demanding in that they are dealing with nuances, all of which must be clearly conveyed.
As they are.
There is one witness, a fairly grumpy airforce factotum with a torrent of technical detail. Peter Davies has it all down pat and one can almost believe he really knows this stuff. Fahad Farooque plays the accused fighter pilot, and he explains his case and one sees him as a person. Kate van der Horst gives evidence as widow of a passenger. She sheds tears. It is touching. Perchance she is just there to humanise the dilemma. In terms of legal evidence, it seems a superfluous role. But the play is intense and fairly static so all added action is welcome. Heaven knows, there is little enough for Ruby Faith as the court stenographer. She keeps a stern face throughout, as does Samuel Creighton as the bailiff. Rachel Burfield, on the other hand, is superbly feisty as the prosecutor. She’s an accomplished actress and, along with Bart Csorba playing her courtroom opponent, possessed of a particularly agreeable stage voice. And, none is better than Sharon Malujlo who embodies the Presiding Judge; a consummate performance.
Hence, with this degree of professionalism, with this striking set, with good direction as well as sound and lighting, this challenging play has tension and clarity, sufficient for audience members to cast their verdicts and, perchance, go home to spend the rest of the night arguing the judgements with their partners.
Samela Harris
When: 20 to 29 Oct
Where: Holden Street Theatres
Bookings: holdenstreettheatres.com