★★★★
Palmerston Projects Pty Ltd. Star Theatres – Theatre One. 12 Mar 2021
Shame on you if you never heard of Sir George Hubert Wilkins. He was one of the world’s greatest explorers, a pioneer pilot of air exploration, the first to travel under polar ice in a submarine, way ahead of his time on global meteorology, a keen recorder of scientific data, and as the title suggests, a moving image and still photographer, particularly of the polar icescape, Aborigines and Innuits, and the Western Front. He should have died many times over. Like Forrest Gump, he seemed to be at the right place at the right time for great events. Wilkins was on the 1921/22 Shackleton-Rowett Expedition to the Southern Ocean on which Shackleton died, and he photographed King George V knighting Sir John Monash on the battlefield. Monash said of him, “[Wilkins] was a highly accomplished and absolutely fearless combat photographer. What happened to him is a story of epic proportions. Wounded many times ... he always came through. At times he brought in the wounded, at other times he supplied vital intelligence of enemy activity he observed. At one point he even rallied troops as a combat officer ... His record was unique." More often, he was creating the great events with many world firsts. And he was born near Hallett in 1888, the last of 13 children, on a property on the wrong side of the Goyder Line. His birth house is still there, recently restored by aviator Dick Smith, and a great visit.
Adelaide’s Peter Maddern is a Wilkins tragic - as many people familiar with his story are - and he lovingly spent two-and-a-half years researching and creating this documentary comprising stills of Wilkins in action but mostly Wilkins’s own film and still photography. He takes us chronologically and faithfully along on Wilkins’s adventures including the Caribbean, war zones, Arctic and Antarctic ice and aviation, Stalinist starvation in Russia, and a 1923/24 survey for the British Museum of bird life in northern Australia. Regarding the latter, his intimacy with the Aborigines and criticism of Australian authorities for their plight and for environmental degradation earned him the disapprobation that has thwarted his recognition in this country, even though the US Navy thought so highly of him that they scattered his ashes at the North Pole, and returned to do the same for his wife a few years later.
Maddern self-admits that he is not a professional documentary film-maker but this is a bloody excellent effort, utilising the Ken Burns effect, his own narration, background scores and voiceovers of Wilkins’s quotes (although his Wilkins voice is decidedly too immature).
Don’t let the weird poster picture of a seaplane superimposed on Wilkins’s face put you off. This is a great film for the fans and the buffs of great biography. Bravo!
David Grybowski
When: 12 to 21 Mar
Where: Star Theatres – Star Theatre One
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
Adelaide Festival of Arts. Adelaide Town Hall. 9 Mar 2021
As if his main program hadn’t already won-over the hearts of the large audience, Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen’s gorgeous performance of the Broadway song Adelaide as his encore conclusively sealed the matter. Composed by the legendary Frank Loesser, Adelaide was written specifically for Frank Sinatra to sing in the film version of Guys and Dolls and includes the lyrics “But Adelaide, Adelaide, ever-loving Adelaide, is taking a chance on me.” On hearing those words, the large Adelaide Town Hall audience collectively intoned a satisfied ‘aahhhh’ behind their compulsory face masks and wished Cohen would stay on amongst us for more concerts instead of wanting to race home back to his fiancée in San Francisco whom he has not seen for several months.
We never took a chance on him. Cohen is a consummate artist who is already near the top of his game and would seem to have a starry future before him.
Cohen is a countertenor of comparatively tender years – he is only twenty-seven years old. His voice is already a superb instrument and is unusual when one considers that he appears to be a solidly well-built young man with neck musculature that is not commonly associated with counter tenors. His song selection covered the usual territory associated with his voice type, and we delighted in his vocal wizardry in arias from Handel’s Saul and Rodelinda. The audience wanted more Baroque repertoire but instead Cohen served us an unusually eclectic program with unexpected inclusions that showed off his talents and flexibility to the best advantage.
He begins his concert with Quilter’s Three Shakespeare Songs which announces to the audience that his talent is the ‘real deal’. His performance of Night by Florence Price is sublime: beautiful articulation and deep empathy with the text. Muted desire is evident in the four Brahms lieder that follow, and the first half of the program finished with an astonishing heart-felt performance of two Jewish hymns.
After the interval, the Handel arias are followed by sensitive and passionate interpretations of three songs by Henri Duparc. The concert rounds out with selections from the American Songbook as Cohen’s thoughts perhaps gently turn towards San Francisco. Misty, by Erroll Garner, is hauntingly sung, but Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered doesn’t quite have the degree of sultriness we usually associate with this classic number from the Rodgers and Hart musical Pal Joey. However, I Get a Kick Out of You by Cole Porter is the perfect choice to finish the show and shows that Cohen can sing repertoire from across the centuries and make it all his own.
Throughout the concert Cohen is accompanied by Konstantin Shamray at the piano. Shamray is no stranger to Adelaide audiences as a virtuoso soloist, and it is a treat to enjoy his performance as a collaborative pianist. He and Cohen clearly prepared the concert well and the understanding between them is evident. Little things, like the vocals not being overshadowed by the piano on the first note of a phrase, are evident, and Shamray’s virtuosic ‘jamming’ in the closing numbers thrilled the audience.
Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen and Konstantin Shamray. What a superb festival pairing!
Kym Clayton
When: Closed
Where: Adelaide Town Hall
Bookings: Closed
★★★
Adelaide Fringe. Matt Eberhart, Jai Lee, Eric Tinker, Rich Jay, Barbarella Accordato & Rob Butvila. The Griffins – The Sky Room. 10 Mar 2021
By now you should know that the events of the Adelaide Fringe are not curated. The Fringe originated from the exclusiveness of the Adelaide Festival, and the Fringe founders – a bunch of equal opportunists - decided that all and any comers should be able to register a show. Consequently, there is a broad range of quality on offer, from well-rehearsed touring and local professional shows to stuff cobbled together by a few like-minded brave souls hoping to conjure up that theatre magic.
Musical Improv – The Immature Amateurs, as the title implies, is one of the latter, and unlike some Fringe shows, they can’t be nailed for misleading the public. Improvisation is making it up on the spot, so A+ for temerity. Musical improv is an improved version, and in this incarnation of the format, the talented Jai Lee provides musical background or saving riffs and intro bars for the performers by playing a panoply of instruments, sometimes simultaneously. When things aren’t going so well, Jai Lee bridges until the momentum returns, but more often, with the actors, turns cobbled-together narrative and nonsense into a makeshift musical.
Troupe leader Matt “Banana Man” Eberhart brought together Rich Jay, Rob Butvila, Eric Tinker and Barbarella Accordato, most of whom are appearing in other Fringe shows. They seek suggestions and themes from the audience and after a brief huddle, voila! The action begins, eg. Shrek meets The Predator. This they do three times in a show – an entirely different show every night. And it’s wonderful to spot the telepathic etiquette of improv co-operation.
If I were keeping score, I would say more misses than hits. Eberhart and Tinker were especially adept at getting a song going and rhyming couplets on-the-spot, but Accordato was saving herself for something else. Watching improv is a bit like staying up for a meteor shower - could be great. But what will happen for sure every night is you get to watch performance under pressure and no doubt, that pressure turns carbon into diamonds. How many diamonds…? More diamonds, please!
David Grybowski
When: 9 to 14 Mar
Where: The Griffins – The Sky Room
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
★★★½
Adelaide Fringe Festival. Ukulele Death Squad. Grace Emily Hotel. 9 Mar 2021
The Grace has always been an intimate venue; it’s been made more so by the addition of tables to keep patrons apart in these COVID times. Putting five people on the small stage here is always a big ask, but as three were vocalists who didn’t need too much room, it worked okay for them. Including the bit where Matt Barker leaps over the foldback and sings Stagger Lee in our faces!
The Death Squad is usually comprised of at least three ukuleles, creating a brilliant and skilful wall of sound and raucous entertainment, converting many a ukulele sceptic into hard core disciple. That’s probably not going to be the case with this iteration; there’s only one ukulele on offer, along with a U-bass. As founder and sole uke player Ben Roberts explained, it was just too difficult (and probably not cost effective given reduced audience capacities) getting the others in and out from interstate where they now reside. The solution was to bring in Matt Barker, Alice Barker and Ashlee Randall to supplement Roberts and bassist Eamon Burke.
The five vocalists work hard to fill in the sound, and for the most part, it works. Opening with The Good Son, they make clear from the start that they have their own take on Cave’s songs. Randall and Barker use their voices to flesh out the sound, utilising sound as well as song, sometimes braying, screeching, with Randall creating great effects through a kazoo. For the most part, particularly on Red Right Hand, it works very well.
In contrast, the mellifluous Eamon Burke gave us People Just Ain’t No Good (featured in the great bar scene in Shrek 2); a stunning rendition, beautifully harmonised and mostly allowed to breathe on its own.
Where the Wild Roses Grow is given a forceful rendition from Randall, while Roberts demonstrates the skill of his playing with a very melodic Into My Arms. He also intros The Ship Song with some excellent playing, but the song itself is perhaps the least successful vocally, with the multiple voices crowding the song.
Roland S Howards’ teen angst anthem Shivers’ from Boys Next Door days gets an airing, which again could have used a bit more space in the arrangement, and the tempo picks up again with Matt Barker’s aforementioned high octane version of Stagger Lee. The quintet close out with Grinderman’s Palaces of Montezuma.
It isn’t really a night for the ukulele, but as a tribute to Nick Cave, it is entertaining and well presented. The impression is given that these singers will be joining the remaining members of the ‘Squad in a seven piece line up; now that will be something to see!
Arna Eyers-White
When: 16 Mar
Where: The Grace Emily
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
Adelaide Festival of Arts. Her Majesty’s Theatre. 7 Mar 2021
Igor Levit, one of the world’s best pianists, sits down at Steinway Model D Concert Grand Piano No. 582125 in Berlin and plays Beethoven’s mighty 33 Variations on a waltz by Anton Diabelli, Op. 120, commonly known as the Diabelli Variations, to an audience half way around the world in Adelaide (and Mount Gambier). It is 11am in Berlin, and 8.30pm in Adelaide, and Levit and the audience are connected by the technical wonders of live-streaming. The result is an outstanding and joyous success.
Throughout the COVID pandemic we have all become quite used to the live streaming of almost anything, from keep fit classes to meetings, lectures and concerts. We take it all in our stride, and Zoom will soon enter the vocabulary as both a noun and a verb. However, live streaming a solo pianist performing one of the titans of the repertoire to a festival audience is fraught. Will the audience feel a connection to the artist, and will the artist be able to feed off that? Will the vision emulate how an individual watches a soloist in action: shifting one’s gaze from hands to face to instrument to the surrounding space, in almost random order? Will the all-important sound reproduction do justice to the music? Will there be technical difficulties?
Happily, the occasion is as close to a live and instantaneous concert hall experience as one could get, notwithstanding a few fleeting and minor issues with ‘crackly’ sound. The technicians and producers who put it all together know what they are doing and understand exactly what the audience is after. One becomes so absorbed in the performance that one soon forgets about the particular nature of the event. It soon becomes just another concert, but made all that much more special by its very nature.
Festival joint artistic directors Neil Armfield AO and Rachel Healy introduce the evening and speak briefly with Levit before he begins playing. The patter is relaxed and Levit comments that he appreciates knowing the audience is there and that the physical separation is irrelevant. He says it is all about “sharing the moment”.
The Diabelli Variations comprise a waltz theme by Diabelli with thirty-three variations for piano written between 1819 and 1823 by Beethoven. The work ranks alongside J. S. Bach's Goldberg Variations as one of the mightiest and greatest of the form. Unlike the approach taken in the Goldbergs and in other substantial examples of the form (even those composed by Beethoven himself), it is often difficult to recognise much of the theme in the actual variations. For each variation, Beethoven seizes on mere ‘jots’ from the original theme – an ornament, a repeated note, a pattern, a rhythmic structure – and uses them to create an astonishing array of inventive pieces that are unconstrained by the theme.
Levit enjoys himself playing the Diabellis. At times it appears as if he is toying with tempi and probing the dynamics. He is lively: a smile here, a smirk there, a leg occasionally fully stretched under the instrument, his body sometimes rising completely off the bench, a head scratch, but throughout he has a steely concentration. The result is a performance that is unfussed, fresh, incisive, questioning, individual and deeply human. Above all, it is musical and technically brilliant with a clear narrative.
At the end, Levit appears not to be able to hear the enthusiastic applause from the audience, and calmly leaves the stage allowing us to ponder the comparative quietness and simplicity of the final variation as we to try and recall the now almost forgotten waltz
Bravo Adelaide Festival for creating this wonderful event.
Kym Clayton
When: Closed
Where: Her Majesty’s Theatre
Bookings: Closed