Adelaide Festival. Festival Aix-en-Provence & Adelaide Festival. Festival Theatre. 28 Feb 2020.
Requiem is not only a performance of Mozart’s famous mass for the dead. Director Romeo Castellucci has augmented it with other lesser known compositions by Mozart and bookended it with two anonymously composed plainchants. For those who know and love Mozart’s Requiem, the interpolators are immediately obvious as soon as they heard. But, there is a coherence to the augmented work and it becomes more than just a tribute to the dead: it becomes an homage to the ever changing cycle of life: birth to death, creation to destruction, evolution to regression, order to chaos.
Castellucci’s Requiem is audacious and has to be seen to be believed. It is ingenious in its conception, and astounding in its performance. The core to its success is the use of striking visual imagery, a lot of which is created in front of our eyes, literally: the large white light boxed stage is abstractly painted by members of the cast; the stage is scattered with soil out of which emerges early man; a forest setting grows; distinctive costuming poses questions but with no obvious answers; an abstract crucifixion; a car wreck and crash victims. Over this graphic celebration, Mozart’s music plays and the Requiem is sung in Latin and German. When one bothers to read the surtitles, one’s mind inexorably tries to draw connections between the images on stage and the sung text. One’s conclusions do not matter. It is ultimately a very personal experience and is driven by the human mind striving to make meaning, as it is wired to do.
One meaning is however patently clear. The span of human existence – right from its evolutionary precursors – is associated with creation, technical accomplishment, and eventual destruction. From the start of the performance to its conclusion, a sequence of words are projected across the rear wall of the stage box that name things that are now extinct – things from the natural world, things from the man-built world and, philosophically (and troublingly) things that might become extinct (such as “me”, “the word me”). It’s a disturbing list, with some things very close to home. The final projection was ‘28 February 2020’ — the date of today’s performance.
The production ends with the destruction of the entire set: a metaphorical end to the world. It is an awe-inspiring and breath-taking sight to behold. It simply must be seen. And out of death and destruction emerges new life, and the conclusion is a touching beautiful moment.
The programme notes suggest that Castellucci has a lead hand in nearly every aspect of the production: direction, set design, costume and lighting design. His hyper creative mind has enacted a unity and lucidity on the entire production.
Choreographed movement by Evelin Facchini is a key production element, with everything carefully staged. The ‘dance’ is not precision balletic movement – it is not meant to be. It is suggestive of changing mood, intention, and sophistication. It is highly effective and communicative – it adds to the whole, it does not try to become a focus in itself.
There are numerous ancillary non-singing cast members taken from local ranks who contribute to crowd scenes that make provocative and powerful images. They are sometimes naked but their (and the audience’s) modesty is protected by the strikingly executed chiaroscuro lighting.
The Adelaide Symphony Orchestra plays at its customary high standard (with the minor exception of some modulating horns in the opening bars). Conductor Rory Macdonald sets a comfortable pace that allows the very fine chorus to create and maintain the most beautiful of tones. Nothing is rushed, and everything is exquisitely articulated.
The four international principal soloists – Siobhan Stagg (hailing from Australia), Sara Mingardo, Martin Mitterrutzner, and David Greco – sing with great control and no affectation or unnecessary embellishment. Like hand in glove, their individual voices perfectly suit the music. Boy treble Luca Shin is angelic, and sustains musicality and clarity even in the softest moments.
The costuming is highly effective, and ranges from unisex monochromatic outfits to colourful folk-styled costumes, and abstract forms that, on occasions, suggest alterative interpretations for the sung text. Again, this production is very much about individuals grappling to create their own meaning and not being confined to the traditional interpretation of the text.
The genesis of Mozart’s Requiem is surrounded in controversy: how much of the music is actually Mozart's? Mozart was commissioned to write a Requiem mass, but died before he could finish it. It was then worked on by Joseph von Eybler and subsequently completed by Mozart’s student and assistant Franz Süssmayer. Mozart’s wife then passed it off to Count von Walsegg, who commissioned the work, as Mozart’s own work. Ironically, Walsegg was most likely intending to pass off the piece as his own composition to commemorate the death of his wife!
When Mozart died he had completed only the first six movements of the work, the eighth and ninth, and a fragment of the seventh out of a total of thirteen sections. The extent to which Süssmayer relied upon Mozart’s instructions is not precisely known, and a number of alternative versions of the Requiem have been subsequently developed by musicologists (e.g. Prof Michael Finnissy in 2011), but the Süssmayer version is the one most often performed, as it was tonight.
Regardless of who wrote what, Beethoven is reputed to have said that ‘If Mozart did not write the music, then the man who wrote it was a Mozart.’ High praise indeed. It is a fascinating story, about which much gloss was added in the acclaimed 1984 film Amadeus.
It has been suggested that even though Mozart’s Requiem was commissioned, he wrote it as if it were his own requiem, for he knew his health was failing, his death was imminent and this would be his last composition. This perhaps explains why it is thought the dying Mozart gave Süssmayer detailed (verbal) instruction– one final struggle to finish it and ‘get it right’. Perhaps Castellucci had this in mind as he conceived the staging of his version of the Requiem: that we as a species write our own Requiem (and that of other species and things), wittingly or unwittingly, but in the end it is really beyond our absolute control.
This production is pure theatre, and it is magnificent.
Kym Clayton
When: 28 Feb to 4 Mar
Where: Festival Theatre
Bookings: adelaidefestival.com.au
Adelaide Festival. Chaliwaté and Focus. Space Theatre. 28 Feb 2020
It might start with tiny trees in a miniature snowscape but Dimanche erupts and evolves and leaps and blows into gargantuan proportions. It is a supremely ambitious piece of both black theatre and what the company has called “gestural” theatre and what we may describe as multimedia physical theatre. In other words, it is hard to define.
Thematically it is a commentary on climate change. In this context it is terrifying and heartbreaking. It gives and it takes away. It delivers joy and amusement in cameos and then whisks the rug from under them, shattering the mood with fearful consequences.
It presents the most superb polar bear ever to hit a theatre stage. Oh, what a soft and huge and adorable thing it is with its cheeky wee cub tumbling about. But they both are imperilled by the melting polar ice. Just as the scuba diver, so comical with the cumbersome oxygen tank, faces an oceanic cataclysm. On land, there are catastrophic storms. The theatre shudders with thunder and the cracks of lightning. The wind howls and whines and wails and screams.
There are three characters, actor/puppeteers. In the darkness, other shadowy puppeteers are controlling the marvels and miracles and seamless transitions of this Belgian-based company.
There is a thread of our ever-present modern media, a camera crew valiantly trying to cover disasters. They are funny and very human.
There is the family living with the extremes of climate change. One minute the world is meltingly hot in their urban dwelling. They are limp with heat but quick to care for their dear old granny, touching, wordless, love against the environmental odds. The next, they must fight the cyclonic winds. The performers do so brilliantly and one truly believes there is a gale on stage. Buster Keaton could not have done better in battling the savage wind.
This production won awards when it began as a short experiment at Edinburgh Fringe and comes to us now extended and complete, as a major work of Festival calibre.
It is a family show for ages nine and up and it is rich in potent, unforgettable imagery. While its narrative line may meander, its visual splendour just keeps on astounding with sounds and visions which sear into mind’s eye - forever.
Samela Harris
When: 28 Feb to 7 Mar
Where: Space Theatre
Bookings: adelaidefestival.com.au
Adelaide Festival. Lion Arts Factory. 27 Feb 2020
Kate Tempest is exactly that. A storm of spoken words, ideas, dreams. Standing on the stage in front of a backdrop featuring a large circle, she thanks us before the show; she might not get to it later, and she really wants to say thank you.
Opening her Festival show with Europe Is Lost, we are immediately plunged into her apocalyptic world view: “Europe is lost, America lost, London lost // Still we are clamouring victory // All that is meaningless rules // We have learned nothing from history”
Her head shorn of the curly red locks we’ve come to associate with her, Tempest doesn’t keep us down in the despair that it is so easy to sink into; in People’s Faces she brings a vision of hope, understanding that, “It's hard, we got our heads down and our hackles up” but there is an end, there is an end.
Tempest featured pieces from her two previous albums (both nominated for the Mercury Prize) and the most recent The Book Of Traps And Lessons, produced by the legendary Rick Rubin, who also produced the remarkable American Recordings for Johnny Cash.
It is tempting to just keep telling you what she says, but there are albums, books and plays for that. But the words just hammer, they grind, they imprint, and all the while Clare Uchima’s synthesiser loops and swirls, sometimes pounding, sometimes soothing.
The lighting was the least successful part of the show; shining bright white lights directly into the audience’s eyes is known as ‘crowdfucking’ and there was far too much of it during this performance.
But all is forgiven when Tempest croons Lessons, then bursts into Circles, reaching a crescendo of pulsating light and synth rhythm, noise and light assaulting the senses.
“I go round in circles // Not graceful, not like dancers // Not neatly, not like compass and pencil //
More like a dog on a lead, going mental.”
Kate Tempest is a force to be reckoned with.
Arna Eyers-White
When: 27 Feb
Where: Lion Arts Factory
Bookings: Closed
★★★
Adelaide Fringe. Spiegeltent, Garden Of Unearthly Delights. 25 Feb 2020
What is one to make of Tim Rogers? He is a man who can do anything. Accuracy demands that be amended to ‘he is a man who can do a bit of anything’, and I feel that is partly the issue.
Liquid Nights In Bohemia Heights opens with a pretend cricket commentary on the pretend Bohemia Heights team, hosted by Tim as the pretend Reginald Tuttle on the pretend 3BH community radio station, located in the pretend town of Bohemia Heights. In this scenario, the BH first eleven are under the pump, their opponents (The Budgerigars) score is an impressive 3 for 746, before the narrative takes a turn.
In this case, truth is stranger than fiction… the show morphs into a talkback episode hosted by Tim, who is so curiously laidback he almost allows his sidekicks to steal the show, and the pearls are the pretend local advertisements, presented in 1950s fashion with live inserts and sound FX (the Foley artist).
And so, after a waffling start the guests are introduced: comedian Frank Woodley does a great bumbling turn as himself, turning in a song about Groucho Marx, the role of sadness in comedy, and empathy. His poise and his self-deprecating humour make him a community radio natural (no slight to be inferred).
Malia Walsh & Cassia Jamieson from Circus Trick Tease prove that circus and acrobatics are not really radio sports able to be easily commentated, and the final guest of the evening is Ben Marwe, singer for Adelaide rock band Bad//Dreems. I reckon they’re great, but I question how many of the audience have heard any of their stuff. Perhaps Rogers felt that was reason enough to introduce him into the show, and ask whether he was ‘an exemplar of men’.
“Yes” is my note of Marwe’s deadpan reply.
Liquid Nights In Bohemia Heights is a curious show which seems to struggle for reason. It may be a metaphor, therefore, for Rogers himself post You Am I. As one of the greats of Australian rock n roll, Rogers is to be congratulated for leaving behind his music and seeking fresh horizons, but the script is sometimes tangled and verbose, the idea behind the show likewise obscured by a lack of direction. I note the programme notes describes Tim Rogers as ‘louche’, but he appears onstage more laidback and less louche than advertised.
It may be that this review is best read as a companion piece to that of fellow luminary Tex Perkins, who played the same venue two nights later.
Alex Wheaton
When: Closed
Where: Spiegeltent, Garden Of Unearthly Delights
Bookings: Closed
★★★★★
Adelaide Fringe. Spiegeltent, Garden Of Unearthly Delights. 27 Feb 2020
This really was quite something: Tex Perkins as himself, running through a catalogue of the swampy blues he loves, in the company of a musician as talented as Matt Walker.
In front of a full house Perkins was comfortable and in control; the showman in his natural environment, even when his concentration was being sorely needled by the incessant huckster calls from the venue adjacent. He has a stage presence which Walker does not, and the two combined effortlessly in their strengths.
Having said that, Tex Perkins is no guitarist, a fact he ruefully acknowledges as he hams up a single string solo in Whenever It Snows.
And so to the music itself: a run through the lives and loves of Tex Perkins (real name Greg), who arrived in Sydney from his hometown Brisbane sometime in the 1980s and immediately began carving out a reputation. To my delight he included Marguerita (written with Danny Rumour, later a band-mate in the Cruel Sea) and a slice & dice version of Psycho from the Beasts Of Bourbon debut album The Axeman’s Jazz. Perkins introduced the song as “the first song I ever recorded”, which I suspect was not entirely accurate. Thug perhaps claimed that honour.
No matter. This was a warm evening’s entertainment from two of the best in the business. Walker employed some gorgeous style in his 12 string guitar backdrop to Pay The Devil His Due, and Cruel Sea aficionados got two of the best; Anybody But You and The Honeymoon Is Over. For fans, this really was a show to savour.
It may be that this review is best read as a companion piece to that of fellow luminary Tim Rogers of You Am I fame.
Alex Wheaton
When: Closed
Where: Spiegeltent, Garden Of Unearthly Delights
Bookings: Closed