Woozy horns, fierce sax: Big Jazz Day Out should be a permanent swing

Pleasingly, the festival was well-attended, with most shows attracting attentive and enthusiastic audiences. Here’s hoping the Big Jazz Day Out can find a permanent place on the city’s arts calendar.
Review by Jessica Nicholas

THEATRE
Lord of the Rings – A Musical Tale ★★★
The Comedy Theatre, until June 8

How to condense a 1200-page trilogy and more than 11 hours of Middle-earth’s epic high fantasy tale into a musical spanning slightly less than three hours? It may seem like a fool’s errand, but this stage production is a valiant effort.

The Comedy Theatre stage isn’t big enough to contain the action of Frodo and Sam’s treacherous mission to destroy the “one ring to rule them all”, and even before the musical commences, we’re treated to sandal-clad hobbits in cropped pantaloons spilling out into the aisles and front rows, regaling delighted audience members and engaging them in jigs as they celebrate Bilbo Baggins’ “eleventy-first” birthday, the event that kicks off the story.

Characters continue to situate themselves among the audience throughout. The merriment of this high-energy, 32-person production can’t be overstated. The ensemble cast switches seamlessly between playing various instruments, singing, dancing and acting. The minimalist set with its textured wood backdrop flanked by ladders and balconies unfurls, rotates and advances in fascinating ways, while illuminated by Rory Beaton’s lighting design to lend it dimension and depth.

Diehard fans will be disappointed by the omission of key characters – Faramir, Eowyn and Eomer among them – and the retrofitting of characters such as Denethor into iterations antithetical to who they were in the films and books. The epic’s villainous foot soldiers – orcs, uruk-hai, wargs, etc – have been flattened into budget ninjas donning gas masks, defanging them of their terror. More successful are the Nazgûl, grim reapers touting skeleton horse heads emitting horrifying screeches.

The pacing is curiously imbalanced. The first half unfolds overly leisurely and ends where The Fellowship of the Ring concludes, which means the second half moves at breakneck speed through the remaining two books – truncating key events into set pieces that last mere minutes.

And what to make of the musical element? Less a musical than a stage show with songs scattered throughout, many of the musical numbers are largely unmemorable, except a few such as the electric The Cat and the Moon.

But there’s much to love too. Physical comedy and contemporary additions to the script are mined for humour. The deep kinship between Sam (Wern Mak) and Frodo (Rarmian Newton) remains the heart of the story, with Newton expertly embodying Frodo’s increasing beleaguerment and internal conflict as he nears the fires of Mount Doom.

Their affecting duet Now and for Always in the second half is one of the musical’s highlights. Laurence Boxhall’s performance as Gollum alone deserves five stars as he bounds across the stage on all fours, swings from ladders and somehow croons in the character’s trademark breathy rasp. It’s like Andy Serkis is in the room with us.

Other standouts are Stefanie Caccamo as Arwen, bringing her signature melodic prowess to the ethereal role, an impressive violin-brandishing Hannah Buckley and cello-playing Jeremi Campese as comedic duo Pippin and Merry, and Jemma Rix as the majestic Galadriel. And there’s the magic of it all. The demonic Balrog and gigantic spider Shelob are magnificently brought to life. The liminal state Frodo enters whenever he wears the ring is depicted through a stunning combination of lighting, sound and Newton’s arrested movements.

How you’ll feel about this adaptation will hinge on your attachment to the source material, but if you want to see the most fantastical moments of the trilogy resurrected on stage, Lord of the Rings – a Musical Tale mostly delivers.
Reviewed by Sonia Nair

THEATRE
The Comeuppance ★★★
Red Stitch Actors’ Theatre, until May 25

High school reunions are sublime stages for the exploration of thwarted dreams, misled desires and suspended states of youth. Robin Schiff knew it when she wrote the play-turned-film, Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion, now a musical. Christopher Miller knew it when he created The Afterparty, the darkly comic murder mystery TV series that kicks off with a death at a high school reunion after-party. American playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins knew it when he wrote his playscript, The Comeuppance, which premiered Off-Broadway in 2023 and is gracing Melbourne stages for the first time in this Red Stitch debut.

Five friends who used to call themselves MERGE (Multi-Ethnic Reject Group) gather in DC to “pre-game” for their 20-year high school reunion. Edging towards middle age and living through the “comeuppance” from past decisions, they’re in various states of disarray – exacerbated by copious amounts of drugs and alcohol.

Party host Ursula (AYA) recently lost their grandma and is nursing partial blindness due to diabetes. Berlin-based artist Emilio (Khisraw Jones-Shukoor) is reticent about his newborn child and seemingly flourishing arts career. Caitlin (Julia Grace) is trapped in an unhappy marriage. Christina (Tess Masters) is severely struggling as a doctor who navigated the worst of COVID. And interloper Paco (Kevin Hofbauer) is suffering from post-traumatic stress as a war veteran.

But this isn’t any average school reunion. Lurking on the edges of Ella Butler’s eerily constructed facade of a suburban porch is Death itself, who takes turns inhabiting each character to elucidate their relationship to mortality in sonorous, sinister addresses.

It’s a masterful sleight of hand from Jacobs-Jenkins, displaying the actors’ range as they oscillate between their characters and Death, and blending exposition with a blatant reminder that everyone is on a slippery slope towards eventual pain and loss.

The script is exquisitely dark, as Death – personified here as a catty gossipmonger – traverses the terrain of miscarriages, accidental deaths, suicide, death of children, loss of pets, war crimes and fatal illnesses.

Jacobs-Jenkins depicts how large, traumatic, historic calamities like Columbine, 9/11, the Iraq War, Trump’s election and COVID have metastasised into the rot of the characters’ personal lives. It’s a remarkably pessimistic but compassionate snapshot of life as a Millennial.

Under Gary Abrahams’ direction, the characters join the fray at different junctures throughout the night and circle each other in various formations of anger, joy, nostalgia and regret.

In-jokes are carried out to their headiest conclusions in a particularly memorable choreographed sequence, spittle-specked invectives are uttered – mostly by Emilio, whose memories differ from those who’ve had to navigate a different version of the truth to cope with living in the hometown they’re still in – and feelings are irrevocably hurt.

The play is pitched at such a frenetic level that it can be hard to maintain momentum throughout – it’s split into two halves, unlike the original which ran for an uninterrupted 140 minutes – and the intensity of the exchanges are diffused when any one character is monologuing at length. Instead, the play is at its strongest at its bookends with intimate conversations that grapple with the sum of a life. The conceit of Death, while portentous, ultimately fizzles in the final sequences.

A striking work of fiction that dares to situate itself in the aftermath of COVID, The Comeuppance combines horror with social realism to probe existential fears and chart our collective mental state. Are we OK? No, not really.
Reviewed by Sonia Nair

MUSIC
The Soul of the Cello: Timo-Veikko Valve ★★★★
Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Melbourne Recital Centre, May 3

There’s a lot to love about Timo-Veikko Valve. After almost 20 years as principal cello of the Australian Chamber Orchestra, the Finnish-born musician, affectionately known as “Tipi”, has become something of an Australian musical treasure. Blending prodigious technique with infectious enthusiasm, he continues captivating music lovers wherever he goes.

Working with the strings of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, this chamber concert not only confirmed Valve as a charismatic player but proved him a sensitive director and talented arranger.

Bringing a questing sense of exploration to the Prelude from Bach’s solo Cello Suite No. 4 in E-flat major, Valve grew the music’s intensity, leading it directly into a tidy account of Mozart’s orchestral arrangement of Bach’s E-flat major fugue from The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book II.

The variegated textures of Valve’s effective arrangement of Mozart’s String Quartet No. 15 in D minor underlined both the work’s passion and playfulness; qualities reminiscent of its dedicatee, Joseph Haydn.

Deftly alternating solo quartet passages with full orchestra or spotlighting soloists ensured a welcome lightness of touch, as in the Trio of the third-movement Menuetto, where acting associate concertmaster Tair Khisambeev contributed a sparkling solo.

More abrasive textures came with Wiima by Valve’s compatriot, Jaakko Kuusisto. After some sonic shrapnel, the music seemed to morph into a dystopian soundscape from which elements of civilisation struggled to emerge. Solo cameos for Khisambeev, principal second violin Matthew Tomkins and Valve’s former ACO colleague, principal viola Christopher Moore, were all dispatched with aplomb.

Passion and poetry allied with sheer joy made Valve’s account of the Schumann Cello Concerto a thrilling highlight. His tender slow-movement duet with principal cello David Berlin vividly contrasted with the folksy rhythmic swagger of the finale. In manifesting all of Schumann’s elegiac drama, Valve indeed revealed the cello’s dynamic soul.
Reviewed by Tony Way

DANCE
Yirramboi: Monster in the Cyborg Body ★★★
The Channel, Arts Centre Melbourne, May 3

Saturday was a long day for many – politicians, election workers and volunteers at countless sausage sizzles – but for no one more than choreographer and performance artist Joshua Pether, who spent 12 hours in a durational performance, embodying the strange, otherworldly ordeal of Monster in the Cyborg Body.

While the democratic process played out in school halls and community centres, Pether staged his own parallel ritual of personal and political transformation – a slow and fluid ritual, still in the process of becoming – in the small studio behind Hamer Hall, overlooking the Yarra.

The work, scheduled to run from sunrise to sunset, combined two earlier pieces by Pether exploring the intersections of indigeneity and disability. But rather than restaging them directly, he folded their concerns into an evolving performance landscape – circling, diffusing and reworking them in gestures of suspension and hesitation.

It invited a porous kind of attention: audiences drifted in and out, collaborators appeared and disappeared. The performance seemed to breathe with the ebb and flow of its witnesses. In the morning, there was minimal action as piles of dry leaves were gradually shifted around the space and its centrally placed trestle table.

By early afternoon, haze drifted through the room and a glitchy, subterranean soundscape began to pulse. WeiZen Ho, who created the sound design for one of Pether’s earlier works, joined him as a performer. A tangle of yarn was slowly, unsystematically straightened out and then wrapped around a large column: a neat way of registering the passing of time.

By late afternoon, the calm solemnity of the performance gave way to a more intense atmosphere. Appropriately, perhaps, the work reached its climax just as polling booths closed and counting began outside – a moment collective transition registered in the work’s search for new ceremonial forms.
Reviewed by Andrew Fuhrmann

THEATRE
Hans Zimmer ★★★
Rod Laver Arena, April 29

“I haven’t done anything yet,” Hans Zimmer grins when he walks out on stage in Melbourne to immediate, rapturous applause. It’s not hard to see why the mere sight of the man might cause such a response – any movie lover of the past few decades will know his iconic film scores, from The Lion King and The Dark Knight to Dune and James Bond movies.

Zimmer’s unique compositional style melds classical and synthesised elements, so a show bringing it all to life is a little like seeing the MSO if they were all wearing leather and performing in an arena with drunk men heckling them.

Unlike other composers who might stay behind the scenes, Zimmer is a part of the experience: the 67-year-old plays guitar and keys throughout, and also chats candidly. “I treat this like a big dinner party,” he says. “It’s like my best 10,000 friends coming over.”

More than 20 musicians are on stage, with instruments including an electric cello, two drum kits, bagpipes, brass and a large gong. The technical prowess on show is impressive: special mention to Leah Zegler, whose vocal range in the Interstellar suite is incredible, and Pedro Eustache, who makes the Armenian duduk sing sorrowfully alongside Melbourne’s own Lisa Gerrard for the music from Gladiator.

Zimmer’s music is masterful, often building from an unassuming foundation to something grand and sweeping – What Are You Going to Do When You Are Not Saving the World? from 2013’s Man of Steel is a great example, beginning with Zimmer on piano. It’s a joy, too, to hear the spirited music from Pirates of the Caribbean live.

But the show is let down by a poor sound mix – a blown speaker blares intermittently, and at one point the bass is so loud that it is actually painful on the ear. Generic footage accompanies the music – even stills from the films would evoke a stronger emotional response from the audience, who first found the music this way. The concert’s runtime of more than three hours means there are also dips in energy – a tighter selection of music may have made for an overall more cohesive experience.

Still, there are great moments in the show, such as the iconic Lion King music, though the strange inclusion of a non-Zimmer composition (He Lives in You) is ironically my favourite moment of the night. Zimmer ends on Time from Inception – a meditative piece that has the arena silent. It’s a reminder of what good music can do.
Reviewed by Giselle Au-Nhien Nguyen

JAZZ
International Jazz Day Celebration ★★★★
Hanson Dyer Hall, Melbourne Conservatorium of Music, April 29

In 2011, UNESCO designated April 30 as International Jazz Day. Since then, the annual event has become a universal celebration of jazz, with cultural and educational activities held around the world in the lead-up.

This year, the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music hosted a free concert on the eve of International Jazz Day, highlighting some of the most recent additions to the teaching faculty – a faculty that now includes many of this city’s finest jazz musicians.

Andrea Keller (head of the jazz and improvisation department) was positively beaming as she introduced the musicians, who performed in different combinations alongside special guest Simon Barker. Barker has been working as artist-in-residence with the Con’s jazz students, many of whom were in the audience on Tuesday to marvel at the Sydney drummer’s artistry.

They were treated to a masterful display of technique in the service of musicality – not just by Barker, but by all the performers. Solos were deliberately compact, emphasising communication rather than parades of individual virtuosity. International Jazz Day is about the value of shared experiences, after all.

Alto saxophonist Angela Davis lent her ravishingly graceful sound to several ballads, while tenor saxophonist Carlo Barbaro variously strutted, swaggered and delved into turbulent freeform clouds.

The rhythm section (Brett Williams on piano, Stephen Magnusson on guitar, Sam Anning on bass and Barker on drums) sketched deft backdrops for the shifting frontline, instinctively driving the energy forward or pulling back to a whisper when required.

Gian Slater sang mostly wordlessly – including on a striking duet with Barker, where her voice rose like a ceremonial chant over Barker’s expressionistic drums.

Barker also delivered a mesmerising solo improvisation, his undulating limbs and torso acting as kinetic extensions of the rolls, cascades, flutters and explosive hits that emerged from his kit with ritualistic fervour.
Reviewed by Jessica Nicholas

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