Adelaide Festival. Adelaide Town Hall. 9 Mar 2019
The French daily Le Monde has billed the Mahler Chamber Orchestra as the “the best orchestra in the world”. This is a big call, and whether it be true or not, the prowess and sheer class of the ensemble is unmistakeable. Today’s performance is one’s first experience of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra and I’m hooked. I cannot wait for the next opportunity to hear them again.
Conductor Laureate Daniel Harding set his orchestra in a non-traditional setting, with celli and basses to his left and second violins to his right. With a major brass section to his right, the overall effect is to broaden the depth of sound across the stage rather than concentrate the bass sounds to the traditional audience right.
Schubert’s sunny and bright Symphony No 3 in D, D.200 is not frequently performed. It is youthful and brimming with Schubert’s trade-mark melodies. The clarinets and bassoons are light and spirited in the first movement, and the clarinet is brilliant in the second. In the third movement, Vincente Alberola (principal clarinet) is so ‘into ‘ what he is doing that he ‘mouthes’ the music in between his sections and looks around at the other musicians with a beaming smile on his face. Alberola’s joy is typical of every other member of the orchestra, and all the while Harding keeps a firm grip on what they are doing but is ever so gentle (and precise) in his conducting gestures. Indeed, there are times where he doesn’t conduct at all and seemingly leaves the orchestra to its own devices.
Bruckner’s Symphony No 4 in E-flat, WAB 104 “Romantic” is aptly named and the Mahler Chamber Orchestra’s performance of it is surely a highlight of this Festival of Arts. It is the most popular of all of Bruckner’s symphonies, and some brand it as a ‘pot boiler’ that can be relied upon to sell tickets. This may be true, but it is easy to deliver a superficial reading of the Romantic and have it come across as a saccharine sequence of lavish and impressive grand melodies. In Harding’s hands, it shines. The wood winds and brass are luminous in the emphatic opening and are a beacon to light the orchestra’s way to the very end. The timpanist pays as much attention to the horns for his cueing in the second movement as he does to the conductor, such is the trust that they have in each other and Harding. It is a revelation to observe how much the musicians take note of each other. They are ‘into’ each other as much as they are to the music itself! Towards the end of the final movement Harding becomes more and more emphatic, but his style is very much a case of less is more, and it pays enormous dividends.
The audience reaction at the end is telling: caught up in the tsunami of emotion, three or four seconds of silence pass as the last sounds of the Romantic die away, and then all hell breaks loose. There is whistling, foot stamping, clapping, cheers, whooping and standing ovations, and it goes on and on and on. After leading the orchestra through five bows, Harding walks off and each member of the orchestra hugs the person next to them. They know they have done well, and their affection for each other is strengthened further.
The Mahler Chamber Orchestra is an outstanding ensemble. If you ever have the opportunity to attend one of their concerts, don’t pass it up.
Kym Clayton
When: 8 to 10 Mar
Where: Adelaide Town Hall
Bookings: Closed
Adelaide Fringe. Hannah Norris. 9 Mar 2019
Real life stories? Real life people on stage? See the real thing! Autobiography as theatre.
Two women. Mother and daughter. Actors both, generations apart in experience, training or lack of. Exploring where they’ve been in their relationship to each other, to themselves, to their artistic identity across their lives.
The lovely daughter Hannah Norris in red cheerfully greets the audience as they take seats, while also red attired regal mother Angela (née Kendall) reposes on a lounge of cushions, surrounded by baskets and a few snacks on the stage. What follows is illuminating.
After You is autobiography as a theatrical creation, experience and reflection. Not as uncritical hagiographic memoir, but carefully crafted, challenging script, offering melded dual reminisce of daughter and mother lives. It’s a rare and profoundly powerful experience.
Hannah and Angela remember and relive their past and present via anecdote and parallel life history. From Angela’s starting role in the 1960s Melbourne production of The Sound of Music to the earliest memories that made Hannah the respected global artist she is now.
There is pain, there is anger, there are many, many regrets. Many similarities. Yet these women offer their lives unflinchingly as a gift to others that they might learn and profit from it.
The import of the show title grows ever slowly on you. After You… the women who follow and will follow such greatness of example.
David O’Brien
5 stars
When: 8 to 17 March
Where: Live at Tandanya, 3rd Space
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
Adelaide Fringe. The Arch, Holden Street Theatres. 9 Mar 2019
Games, written by award-winning Henry Naylor and superbly directed by Louise Skaaning, is based on a true story set in Nazi Germany. The story is about two talented athletes who both have Jewish heritage and both want to compete at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, but only one gets the chance. Gretel Bergmann, played by Tessie Orange-Turner, is a world class high jumper but is ultimately refused the chance to compete for specious reasons, but her ‘filthy’ Jewishness is the real problem. Helene Mayer (Sophie Shad) only has one Jewish parent and is a world champion fencer. The Nazis want her to compete in the games for a range of face-saving reasons. Bergmann and Mayer are known to each other and when Mayer wins a medal she gives a Nazi salute which offends Bergmann to her very core.
Although the play is solidly about the plight of the Jews during World War II, it is also about the insidious practice of labelling people and imputing particular qualities and characteristics to every member of the entire group.
Mayer is steadfast in refusing to be labelled a Jew – she is an athlete before she is anything else. Perhaps deep down she knows that acknowledging her Jewish heritage would ultimately be her downfall. Bergmann is the opposite: she is fiercely proud of who she is and refuses to accept that Jewishness totally defines her.
Orange-Turner and Shad both deliver compelling performances when they expound these polar opposite viewpoints, and there are others. With no hand props, both word-paint vivid pictures of their athletic prowess: one can almost see Mayer thrusting her foil at an unseen opponent, and Bergmann exploding out of the blocks and hurtling herself high over a bar above the Ayrans.
Orange-Turner and Shad have stunning vocal production – their articulation is copy-book and not a word is lost. This is a wordy play, and Naylor’s text is exquisite. Skaaning has the two actors fully utilising the black and red draped bare stage (save for two wooden boxes), and the audience sees exactly what Skaaning wants us to see: stadiums, Zeppelins, Berlin, baying crowds. The lighting is empathetic, and a gentle smoke haze adds to it all.
This is compelling theatre. It is highly recommended.
Kym Clayton
When: 9 to 16 Mar
Where: Holden Street Theatres
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
Adelaide Fringe. Casus Circus & Cluster Arts. Ukiyo at Gluttony. 8 Mar 2019
You & I is a must see. It is outstanding entertainment.
It is intelligent physical theatre, circus, dance, acrobatics, trapeze, and magic all rolled into one through the narrative of a touching story about being in a loving and sustaining relationship. But not one word is spoken.
Jesse Scott and Lachlan Mcaulay are the co-founders of Casus, a highly successful and popular circus company. In You & I they bare their own real-life relationship and give us a glimpse into themselves as individuals and also into their partnership – domestic and professional. They are masculine, good looking, and sensitive. Yes, this might be thought of as a ‘gay story’, but lazy labelling like that is to diminish it.
Scott and Mcaulay’s physical feats are impressive and their lithe and toned bodies are tough, very tough. There is much visceral strength in their performance and, as is often the case in circus, one needs to unreservedly rely on the other for one’s very safety. The potential for disaster is never far away, and physical danger threatens at every turn. Is the risk of a different nature because your on-stage partner is also your real-life partner?
There is also great delicacy and sensitivity in the performance. Moments of strength and physicality are contrasted with precise choreographed routines that are deft and intimate. Indeed, they are beautiful.
As audience, we are left in no doubt there is unconditional trust between Scott and Mcaulay. You can see it in the way they look deeply into each other’s eyes, the way they smile and sometimes frown at each other. The depth of their communication is palpable. One senses their relationship is rock solid and will endure all that life can throw at it.
Their show is engaging on a number of levels. The set is simple, as is usually the case for a Fringe event where everything has to be assembled and then stripped away with great speed, but is carefully prepared and designed. It imitates a cosy household setting, with the usual furniture and ornaments. There are books, clothes trunks, glasses of wine, and evidence of hobbies. All these things are used to give a glimpse of Scott and Mcaulay’s daily lives and are used to play out the narrative. Nothing is wasted. The sound scape is appealing as well. Every backing song is carefully chosen and assists in telling the story. The lighting is simple but sharply draws attention to the kernel of activity on stage.
This show is one of many circus acts on offer in the Fringe, but it stands apart. It is exceptional and deserves the long and enthusiastic standing ovation it received from the entire audience.
Highly recommended
Kym Clayton
When: 8 to 17 Mar
Where: Ukiyo at Gluttony
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
Verbatim Theatre Group. AC Arts – Main Theatre. 8 Mar 2019
Teenagers’s lips were sewn together in protest. Reza Berati, a 23-year-old Iranian Kurd asylum seeker, was clubbed to death by two Manusians in 2014. Iranian Omid Masoumali self-immolated in April 2016 in detention in Nauru in protest of conditions and delay. He died a few days later. Violence and self-harm were said to be daily occurrences in Australia’s poorly run detention centres as a consequence of the Pacific Solution – a policy where no asylum seeker by boat, refugee or otherwise, would set foot on Australia. These and other stories illustrate the shameful and cruel reality of Manus Island and Nauru detention and are starkly realised in this production by Verbatim Theatre Group.
Nazanin Sahamizadeh formed the company in 2013 specifically to inform her fellow Iranians of the appalling conditions of illegal immigration to Australia. She and her seven fellow cast members use rotating monologue to recount in verbatim the words of asylum seekers and refugees which had been smuggled out from the camps. The main character is Behrouz Boochani, an Iranian-Kurd who fled Iran after his colleagues were arrested. Picked up as a boat person and sent to Manus, he has managed to regularly report to The Guardian using a mobile phone. He is still on Manus Island where he was taken in 2013.
Each actor inhabits a main story of misery, starting with their reasons for illegal immigration. Conditions of near starvation and fearing each day will be your last during the sea crossing in leaky boats, and finally being swamped by stormy waves are imaginatively represented with raining water and a flotilla of jerry cans. However, the camps are not conjured as well. The declamatory and shouty deliveries from the cast are unchanging. The idea of verbatim text precludes useful and dramatic interaction between characters and the result is something like eight simultaneous one-person performances. Persian audiences can easily cope with the often hurriedly delivered text, but for the rest of us, the constant effort to refer to the surtitles took our gaze and empathy away from the performance; more non-verbal communication would alleviate this. Even so, gut-wrenching performances realise the mental and physical breakdown caused by lack of control, gnawing uncertainty, and poor conditions. Indeed, the production is so successful in conveying the miserable and harrowing journey of illegal immigration by boat to Australia that it might even act as a deterrent, which of course, is government policy.
Manus is an uncomfortable truth-telling and to hear the word Australia associated with perpetrator is embarrassing and shameful.
David Grybowski
When: 7 to 10 Mar
Where: AC Arts – Main Theatre
Bookings: adelaidefestival.com.au