Source : the age
Wharf 1, July 24. Until August 16.
“I’m a devil and a saint. I’m admired and vilified,” says Bennelong.
He’s that and more. In this play, he is the means to reconsider what unfolded on Sydney’s shores and for a contemporary Indigenous man to connect to his culture.
Playwright Jane Harrison has crafted a powerfully inventive piece of storytelling that uses meta theatre to bring the present and colonial past face-to-face.
It moves far beyond what we might know about the first Aboriginal man to travel to Europe and back, to consider questions of Black masculinity, how the past and present are in dialogue and the responsibility of passing on knowledge.
The play begins with the lightest of touches. In present-day Sydney, a young actor, Sebastian Anderson (Guy Simon), is poised to audition for a play called Bennelong in London, about the Wangal man and mediator in the early days of the colony who sailed to London with Governor Arthur Phillip.
Sebastian warms up his vocal cords, overacts in front of his phone and wishes the spirit of Bennelong would appear to him. Hey, presto.
In skins and paint up, Bennelong (Googoorewon Knox) materialises like a time-traveller in the actor’s loungeroom.
Sebastian wants to tell Bennelong’s story on stage. Bennelong, with an eye on his own legacy, isn’t convinced Sebastian has the chops to do so.
The first half hour is filled with deft comic exchanges. Bennelong is miffed to learn that while there’s now a small peninsula named after him, his wife Barangaroo got an entire suburb.
There are gags about theatrical practice and questions about who can play what role. An early sound glitch briefly halted the show on opening night.
The tone shifts as Bennelong unpacks his dark and complex tale, of kidnapping, brutality and the devastation of smallpox. His sorrow at the deaths of Barangaroo and his countryman in London is heartbreaking, his shifting relationship with Phillip intriguing.
The play doesn’t shy away from the troubling aspects of Bennelong’s life, in particular the beatings he inflicted on his wives, although his response invites further questions.
Emma White’s set has Sebastian’s loungeroom supported by a block of layered rock. Native reeds, grasses and waratahs grow through cracks in the floor. The effect is a modern home on an ancient, living foundation.
This two-man cast is ideally matched in Ian Michael’s finely balanced production.
Knox is outstanding as Bennelong, bringing depth, grace and emotional range to the role. This is a flesh-and-blood Bennelong.
Simon as Sebastian grows in stature as he learns what stories he wants to tell and why. He earns the right to play the role he wants. Simon also creates distinct characters of several minor roles.
Composer James Peter Brown’s sound design unfolds from barely audible to haunting resonance that combined well with Knox’s rich voice.
This is the third Harrison play the STC has produced in recent years, but the first time it has debuted a new work from her. After The Visitors and Stolen, this latest piece has reconfirmed Harrison’s place as a leading Indigenous voice.
Loading Dock Theatre, Qtopia. July 24
It’s 1991 in a small shared room at Casey House, Canada’s first stand-alone hospice for people with AIDS. Thomas (Chad Traupmann), all Golden Girls quotes and loquaciousness, seems indomitable at first glance – but he hasn’t been out of bed in two weeks. His new roommate, Andre (Gabriel Alvarado), is much younger, freshly transferred to palliative care from the hospital, and deeply distressed. He just wants to be alone; Thomas, all dark wit, promises he will be soon.
But when news gets out that Princess Diana will be making a stop at the hospice during an upcoming visit, Thomas becomes determined to make it at least one more week. In fact, he says loudly, calling to every resident, they all will.
While the characters of Nick Green’s Casey and Diana are fictional and the events of the play, which take place over seven days, counting us down to meeting the Princess, are imagined, this visit really happened. Photographs of Diana making light and affectionate contact with people with AIDS at visits like these helped dispel social fears about the virus.
Pauline (Lucy Miller), Thomas’s sister, is currently grappling with those fears; we meet her as she attempts to reconcile with Thomas after an explosive fallout. She is both genuinely repentant and unwilling, still, to take his hand.
Wharf 1, July 24. Until August 16.
“I’m a devil and a saint. I’m admired and vilified,” says Bennelong.
He’s that and more. In this play, he is the means to reconsider what unfolded on Sydney’s shores and for a contemporary Indigenous man to connect to his culture.
Playwright Jane Harrison has crafted a powerfully inventive piece of storytelling that uses meta theatre to bring the present and colonial past face-to-face.
It moves far beyond what we might know about the first Aboriginal man to travel to Europe and back, to consider questions of Black masculinity, how the past and present are in dialogue and the responsibility of passing on knowledge.
Sydney Opera House, July 20
For the first half, Javier Perianes sat at the piano in reflective rumination as though playing to himself, as he wove together, in an unbroken line of musical thought, pieces by Chopin and Perianes’ compatriot, Manuel de Falla, whose sesquicentenary the concert honoured.
Both composers wrote feelingly of their native country, but refined their authentic voice in Paris. In De Falla’s Nocturno (1896), Perianes blended imitative lines, suggestive of an intimate duet, with smooth tristesse and glowing sound, each phrase cadencing with a characteristic rhythm, like a rhyming song.
Showing remarkable control of line, filigree and shaded nuance, his performance of Chopin’s Nocturne, Op. 27 No. 2 in D flat (1836) was among the most memorable of a memorable night. A group of Mazurkas initiated more active rhythms, although the tone retained quiet radiance. De Falla’s Mazurka (1899) combined melodies of immaculately smooth mournfulness with more vigorous passages in the central section, while in Chopin’s Mazurka Op. 7 No. 2 Perianes lingered on phrases with increasing regret, fading to a whispered hush at the close.
De Falla’s Serenata Andaluza was coloured with sparkling light alternating between dreamy and lively passages. Perianes framed a beautiful, fleetingly glittering, performance of Chopin’s Waltz, Op. 34 No. 2 (1831) with a haunting tenor melody played with his characteristically rich honeyed tone.
De Fallas’ Cancion (1900) was remarkable for its delicacy and controlled changes of sound leading, to the lulling, finely ornamented arabesques of Chopin’s Berceuse, Op. 57 (1843-44). Perianes played all of these pieces with great freedom of tempo, drawing out phrases or hurrying them forward as though to explore their expressive essence.
The second half moved to more extrovert music, beginning boldly with De Falla’s Four Spanish Pieces, one of the earlier fruits of his Paris sojourn. The first of these, Aragonesa, rippled with vitality, while the second Cubana, was infused with expressive rubato led always by the melody.
Montesa was quiet and gently luminous with fleeting energy in the upper reaches of the piano, while the lusty cries that begin the final piece, Andaluza, rang with bell-like clamour. Perianes finished with selections from Albeniz’s Iberia, each piece a miniature tone-poem meandering through soulful melody, watery decoration, spiky energy and brilliant colour. This is music that can sound amiably directionless but with a player of Perianes’ tonal imagination and control it becomes a journey to which one could listen indefinitely.
Sydney Opera House, July 21
It is the “curse” – la maledizione – that drives the drama of Verdi’s Rigoletto. We hear it in the overture’s first portentous notes and in Rigoletto’s despairing cry at the close. Rigoletto believes it ultimately derives from his ugliness, the hunchback that condemns him to a life of humiliation and corrosive bitterness, making him over-protective of the one thing of beauty in his life, his daughter, Gilda.
This classic production by the late Elijah Moshinsky transfers that ugliness to the world at large, in particular, the Duke of Mantua’s court, the centrepiece of designer Michael Yeargan’s rotating set. Creating a surprising sense of depth and space on the Joan Sutherland Theatre’s limited stage, it juxtaposes a palace of glittering debauchery, the false sanctuary of Rigoletto’s home and the seedy tavern of the final tragedy, all connected by murderous dark alleyways.
For this revival, Dalibor Jenis sings the title role with a voice of strength and depth, grained with worry and fierce in self-loathing. He is impressive throughout, but never more so than in the crucial reconciliation scene with the seduced Gilda in Act 2 where impotent frustration over his fate mixes with fragile tenderness.
This was also Gemma Nha’s finest moment as Gilda. Here she displayed a wide emotional and tonal range, beginning Tutte le feste al tempio with winning quietness, before rising to thrilling passion. Earlier she had sung Caro Nome in Act 1 with a bright penetrating sound and a tight vibrato that crazed the tonal surface.
Sydney Symphony Orchestra, Sydney Opera House, July 22
The works on this program were written over roughly a 20-year span, yet, in their expansive vision and power, changed the course of musical history. Conductor Simone Young and the Sydney Symphony Orchestra played the slow opening of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 1 in C, Op. 21 with majestic breadth, synchronising the plucked strings and wind chords to create a pointed moment of impulsive awakening.
The first movement was judiciously disciplined in tempo and carefully accented, so the effect was energetic without being brusque. Young included the repeats in both first and second movements and, in the latter, allowed an unhurried gracefulness to unfold, tinged with Beethoven’s wry self-mocking that he could be so well-behaved.
The Menuetto was well-articulated and the finale suavely fleet, the players picking up cues of rapidly rising figures with deft wit.
Following this, pianist Javier Perianes played Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in B flat, Op. 19 (actually the first written with its origins dating back to the 1780s) with unassuming elegance and light imagination as though adopting the same deferential modesty Beethoven had shown when admitting to a publisher that, although not his best, it could be engraved without disgrace.
