Giselle

Saturday, 2 May 2009

Poor old opera. While the serious theatregoer undoubtedly appreciates the soaring heights of complex arias, dramatic plot lines and sumptuous costumes and sets; ballet will always have it beat - at least in the eyes of the tween set and under (girls in particular).

It was the closing night of Giselle, billed as the ultimate romantic ballet, and tradition abounded. The recent Perth International Arts Festival had boasted a modern take on this tragic story, but the West Australian Ballet had chosen tutus, tights and true love.

The audience demographic skewed all the way down to pre-primary ballerinas-in-training, dressed in their sparkly best and with eyes shining with the dreams of one day dancing so lightly on their toes that they could come close to flying.

But while Giselle is trimmed with happy woodland dancers from a country village, and royal hunting parties with brocade aloofness; at it's centre is a doomed love affair.

Naive woman-child Giselle (Jayne Smeulders) gives her heart to duke-in-disguise Albrecht (Ivan Gil-Ortega) and goes mad with grief upon discovering he is customarily betrothed to visiting aristocrat Bathilde (Kasey Polkinghorne).

Snatching his sword, she dances wildly, desperately and so violently that her weak heart collapses under the strain and she dies calling on the Willis, cursing her soul to join the ghosts of maidens betrayed.

Act 2 brings forth the misty scene of Giselle's forest grave at twilight. Myrtha, Queen of the Willis appears and summons her court to weave a deathtrap for the ritual punishment of all who dare step in the forest.

Hilarion (Cass Mortimer Eipper) a rival suitor for Giselle's affections, is summarily dispatched to dance to his death. Surrounded by the vengeful spirits of maidens lost, he has no choice but to accompany them, and their supernatural powers bring about his demise.

Albrecht is similarly caught, and the Queen orders Giselle, the most recent novitiate, to take her revenge, but Giselle, still in love with Albrecht, dances as slowly as she can, delaying time and again, until the break of dawn releases the dark power of the forest and her former love is left regretful and alone.

I enjoyed the opportunity to see one of the Big Ballets (Giselle is often seen as the high point in a dancer's canon of classics, the character is rich with opportunity to display complex emotions and technical skill); however I was a little disappointed that this interpretation chose to give Giselle a weak heart overcome as an explanation for her death - I recall a version I had read about in my mad balletomane tweenhood, where Giselle takes up the sword that reveals Albrecht's true nobility and at the climax of her wild dance, plunges it unto her heart. I'll admit, rather bloodthirsty, but dramatic!

Jayne Smeulders as the title character displayed a bird-like fragility and while dancing well, didn't make me experience the full tragedy of her character. Her eyes were large, but I still felt a distance from her inner life and turmoil, and so was not able to fully feel my heart break along with hers when Albrecht's betrayal was discovered.

Ivan Gil-Ortega was non-threateningly swoon-worthy as Albrecht, and probably had the eyes of a hundred ballet class pupils following his every move across the stage; but his talent and charisma marked him as the perfect leading man, and his soulful gaze soften a character that could have easily been interpreted as a redemptive cad.

The rest of the corps de ballet filled the stage with swirling folkloric motion, there were a few standouts technically amongst the throng, but really they were mostly a movable backdrop for the leads.

But I could see how much all those girls in the audience (some little, some big) enjoyed the show, it is one of the dreams of girlhood... and so despite any critical quibbles will always have the popularity of the masses.

The Way of the World

Friday, 1 May 2009

I'd almost forgotten about John Curtin College of the Arts, a spectacular private school with an emphasis on training future successful auditionees for WAAPA. I must have heard of it when I was performing in my own high school musicals... but Armadale High, despite it's dedicated music program, is a far cry from this Fremantle academic and arts institution and I'm sure I was probably jealous of every single one of the students who was lucky enough to mark attendance here.

A small but colourful entry in a community newspaper stated that William Congreve's Restoration comedy classic The Way of the World was being performed for the first time in 25 years at Curtin Theatre, located on the school grounds and starring "senior gifted and talented drama students" directed by Raymond Omodei.

I'm passingly familiar with this work due to it's sophisticated and witty monologues and was curious as to how the whole play might look on stage. Arriving just as the tones signalled the show was about to start, I dashed in, grabbed a ticket from a teacher/ parent vendor and scored a seat with an envious amount of legroom in comparison to the average. (It pays to be close to the aisle!)

Glancing around I was proven right in my teenage assumption of private school equals awesome infrastructure as the theatre was fantastic, with a large stage cleverly utilised by set and lighting designer Jake Newby to feature large painted panels of complementary or suggestive artworks.

The wardrobe worked on by Isabelle McGrath also suitably represented the ostentation of the time, with elaborate gowns, jackets and knickerbockers costumed throughout, and the most hideously large wigs I've ever seen suffered under by most of the male cast. The men in general also wore a much thicker mask of makeup; while the women (save dowager Lady Wishfort) though cinched in to emphasize a wasp waist and buxom decolletage were able to look far fresher with little powder and pretty hairstyles. At the time, this was the way of the world...

Though the plot was a trifle convoluted, and the language at times unfamiliar, the cast and the crew could not be faulted and the performances were impeccable and well received by the audience. Witwoud (Michael Colson) and Petulant (Cameron Scott) deserve props for portraying such utterly ridiculous fops and talented Rose Riley was very funny as the melodramatic Lady Wishfort. Dark horses Fainall (Adam Sollis) and his lover Mrs Marwood (Zhada Kekez) provided a complex conflict to the comedy, but ultimately a clever resolution is presented at the denouement and all ends happily with the engagement of the the sharp tongued and quick witted sparring partners Millamant (Holly O'Donoghoe) and Mirabell (Jackson Heinz).

I was very impressed with the production and while still slightly envious, I'll admit that this is more than tempered by my admiration for the talent and ambition of the actors and production staff. I'll make sure I'm on the lookout for future shows!

The Seagull

Thursday, 30 April 2009

I don’t know quite what I expected from this Chekhov play – I had heard that his works are dour, talky, with languidly morose depictions; but this adaptation actually had a lot of humour, and some of the characterisations, such as lovelorn Masha (Michelle Davidson) were really rather droll.

Gifted actress and director Marcelle Schmitz has certainly teased out relatively naturalistic performances from her cast drawn from the WAAPA 2^nd year Acting Students, as despite the heightened drama involved in the plot lines, the truth of Chekhov exploring people’s everyday lives and how they justify their choices crosses the barriers of time and place. The theme of unrequited love and cross relationship entanglements formed a lot of the scenes and while the setting may have been 19^th century Russia, the discussions on the nature of fame, age, depression, and living within your means and superannuation (!) made it seem positively modern.

Kostya (Wade Briggs – in an intense and focussing performance) is introduced to us nervous yet excited, he is about to debut his play and is eager to showcase his leading lady Nina (Aileen Huynh) with whom he is desperately in love with. She’s not immune to his enthusiasm for her, but is far more interested in impressing the writer Trigorin (Nicholas McRobbie), erstwhile lover of Kostya’s famed actress mother Arkadina (Eloise Winestock) a scene stealer in every sense, and with enough ego to swallow up all the air in the room. Winestock is hilarious and later proves her dramatic acting chops in a scene with Kostya, first comforting her son tenderly while changing his bandages and then angrily confronting him as they snipe at the complexities of their relationship.

The central role of Nina in the first act needs such a delicate balance of youthful enthusiasm and dreamy virginal sensuality (she is said to have stolen the hearts of all the men of this country estate) that when she later returns as a broken, delusional young woman desperate to just be in the same house as her ex-lover Trigorin, it’s supposed to be a visceral shock to the audience. It’s a challenging role for any actress and I found Huynh a little uneven in her characterisation, but overall the cast was up to the challenge of enormous monologues and pages of singular dialogue.

Smaller characters such as Dr Dorn (Eric Beecroft – easygoingly charismatic) and Shamrayev (Oliver Wakelin) a booming and unselfconscious fan of Arkadina, provided slices of side humour, or in the doctor’s case, a lone voice of support for the depressed Kostya. Paul Dowson as Uncle Sorin, Arkadina’s straight arrow of a civil servant brother, wishing at the end of his life to have accomplished something fair more creative and grand, almost made my heart stop at one point; his hand falling off his chest, his death dreadfully anticipated. But then he snores and everyone laughs nervously. Chekhov wouldn’t do that to us! All the big action takes place off stage! The attempted suicide of Kostya, the affair between Nina and Trigorn, the triumphs and downfalls – these are all absent from our eyes, and we simply hear of them from the characters passing news to each other concerning beloved friends and acquaintances.

The staging was neat and compact with smart use of the trellis side sets and a mirror-like movable entry. The stage crew were as ghosts, experienced and sure. The music was sweet, but forgettable, less another element to distract from the dialogue. But it is the words, words, words that fill the stage and now with this introduction to his work, I shall shy no more away from Anton Chekhov and instead welcome future opportunities to see into his broken sardonic heart.

Mozart's Requiem

Wednesday, 8 April 2009

Religion has sneakily brought me back to church - by offering itself as an alternative venue for the performing arts. Last Christmas it was Handel's Messiah at St Andrew's, and this Easter it is the Gothic revival glamour of St George's Cathedral, staging two performances of Mozart's Requiem with the West Australian Ballet.

I guess it should make sense really - the Passion plays, the pulpit, the preachers - what is the congregation of church but another example of an audience searching for greater meaning or understanding in life?

Choreographed by Natalie Weir, the WA Ballet presented a mostly abstract, but none the less sombre and spiritual dance to Lacrimosa, a beautiful piece interwoven throughout Mozart's Requiem.

I'd forgotten how much I'd missed seeing the high classical style of ballet live; and the shapes, movements and lines of the dancers were of such pure beauty to me that it was as if they were in a dream.

While the sight lines for the "stage" were imperfect - the Great Crossing of the Cathedral was were the bulk of the performance was detailed and the large columns blocked some of the sections - overall, the audience still managed to see much of the narrative and there were large plasma screen monitors set up to provide a more intimate insight during various pietas between the lead dancers or a full stage overview of the corps de ballet.

The dancers were ably supported by soloists from the WA Opera, with backing from the St George's Cathedral Consort under the reverent musical direction of Joseph Nolan. Stewart Smith showcased his organist skills for the short 60 minute+ running time, with flourishes provided by two trumpeters and a timpanist completing the musicians.

With no obligation to pay for the performance witnessed, I nonetheless gave generously towards the event upon my exit; both for the guilt of being a self confessed lapsed Catholic, and for the spiritual and theatrical enjoyment that I had gained from this devout start to the Easter season.

Moonwebs & Scorched Thongs

Sunday, 7 April 2009

So you think you can dance? Yes, we are in the midst of a youthquake dance craze and boys are no longer afraid to show off their acrobatic and partner lifting skills courtesy of many hours at the ballet barre, and girls can rightly bring it! to the hiphop floor and krump till it hurts.

Steps Youth Dance Company, celebrating it's 20th year of creating dance for more than 2000 young people between the ages of 9 and 24 years, has contributed greatly to the development of movement and dance theatre in Western Australia. It started a Boys Can Dance initiative 12 years ago which has paid handsome dividends in the equal representation of males and females in this production's cast, and a relatively balanced view of gender politics for Generation Y & Z (the latter of whom I like to refer to as the iGeneration - as in iPod or internet).

A rather erotic quote was used in the miniprogram supplied at the Playhouse Theatre from Project Artistic Director, Alice Lee Holland:

"Male and female represent the two sides of the great radical dualism. But, in fact, they are perpetually passing into one another. Fluid hardens to solid, solid rushes to fluid. There is no purely masculine man, no purely feminine woman." - Margaret Fuller, The Dial Magazine, 1843

Confronting sexuality it would seem (the quote was supplied by one of the dancers for a communal ideas pin up board), but don't worry, this performance piece was more interested in investigating issues of gender than of coupling.

Flowing segments moving from period costume era ettiquette to present day schoolyard sectionals (the It girls, the Sports Jocks, the Squares, the Outsiders) transfered through from the opening onwards and there was always a constant pace across stage from left to right - signifying the passage of time, the journey from child to youth to adulthood - just that ever present movement that typifies growth.

I found the segments danced by the boys dynamic and interesting, at times dark and typically testosterone layered, but with enough creative technique and insight from the dancers to reveal that core of art and sensitivity that males on the surface sometimes choose to eschew.

The selection and choreography for the girls was pretty and at times melancholy, but I found a lot of the dancers seemed to be rather follow-the-leader in their movements - was this reflecting the stereotype that females are happy to go with the flow and are less inclined to rebel and display agressive movement then males? It would have been intriguing to see a few awkward, rebelling or emo edged girls expressing their individuality, but maybe I'm seeing conformity when I should really be intuiting camaraderie.

The schoolyard scenes were fun and relatable, with comic personalities giving us an insight into the dancers on stage. It's too easy sometimes to look at line and technique when appreciating dance and forgo the charisma of the performers.

I'm sure there were a lot of friends and family at the matinee I attended as the final scenes showing off in small groups or individually some amazing moves got the audience pumping and whooping it up - take that, Channel Ten! Look out for this year's class to graduate to an audition auditiorium for So You Think You Can Dance fame in the near future.

Looking forward to STEPS 21st birthday party in 2010!

The Marriage of Figaro

Saturday, 28 March 2009

Light, frothy and as mind twisting as an alcopop, Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro is an effervescent treat; it's mainstream familiarity not deterring the serious opera goer, rather it gives them a chance to enjoy the genius composer's prankster wit as we all laugh at the upstairs/ downstairs shenanigans within a country estate outside Seville.

I won't belabour the plot, suffice to say there are mistaken identities galore, boys dressed as girls (though that role is actually played by a girl dressed as a boy...who then has to masquerade as a girl - more Victor/ Victoria confusion!), romantic triangles, quadrangles and possibly even a pentacle; but a happy ending is assured; long lost families are found and true love truimphs.

The pace and performances were brisk and humourous with James Clayton skipping through his title role and Sara Macliver proving a fiesty foil as Susanna, Figaro's true love eager to outwit the Il Conte d'Almaviva (Luke Gabbedy), their philandering aristocratic employer, who is determined to wear down her protestations.

Stuart Liang was a hoot as Don Basilio/ Don Curzio, his round moonface alternatively bulging with bluster or sly with machinations and he, Marcellina (Sarah-Janet Dougiamas) and Bartolo (Conal Coad) provided much laughter and gossip in the opening act.

I loved the way the stage was dressed, the heavy curtains of light rust providing both set and cover in Act 1 and they reminded me of the layers upon layers of female courtly dress - under which just about all the males in the cast were eager to get to! There were touches of anachronistic modernity admist the props - a 50s style hair dryer, an ironing board and iron which were humourously affected, however I found the audience room columns in Act 3 rather squat and ugly and so out of place with the lighter colours employed in the rest of the sets.

The WA Symphony Orchestra ably supported the players on stage, but the WA Opera Chorus were practically a blip on the scene, mainly utilised in the audience room and apparently not even worthy of a bow as only the principals and supporting cast got the chance to receive applause from the audience. Ah well...

But the show itself was delightful, and an enjoyable evening of champagne fun.

Assassins

Saturday, 21 March 2009

It's always a little disconcerting to be at the wrong end of a gun, and while I knew that the pistols the actors pointed right into the audience were toys, painted sinister to fit Stephen Sondheim's darkly humourous musical, I couldn't help but feel a little uneasy when the assassins stood as a collective row and sung with passion about how "Everyone's Got The Right" because they judged it to be so via the barrel of a gun.

Director Paul Treasure has brought many a complicated production to life and here is one which stars anti-heroes that would be all too easy to hate. These characters are not merely murderers, no that's far too ordinary a term for their aspirations - these people, real people in American history - sought to be something far more significant, special; and in attempting (and in most of this musical's plot succeeding) in killing the President, they have changed the way the leader of the free world interacts with ordinary Americans. He is elevated and then vilified, in that respect Australians can recognize that there may be something of a tall poppy syndrome at play here, where the ordinary resents the extraordinary.

The stage was dressed well and reminiscent of the American flag; a small musical band in the left hand corner with the backdrop of a glittery blue curtain, a curved bar to the right slashed with thick white and red. The wide empty front stage was bare - this space would be inhabited by each assassin in turn so they could build their world through song and story as we jumped backwards and forwards through time and presidents.

Peter "Pear" Carr was a strong and interweaving presence throughout the piece, not only did he play the egotistical actor assassin John Wilkes Booth, but he went on to portray president after president, giving the audience the many ways a man can die.

The ensemble was unsteady in some parts; chorus numbers were strong, however the band at times drowned out individual singers and as Sondheim puts a lot of story in his lyrics, if you didn't know the musical very well you could miss out on the clever dialogue and smart characterizations inherent in the work.

A challenging show, but proof that musical theatre is more than just singing about love and adventure - the scene when the ensemble calls as ghosts of both past and future haranguing Lee Harvey Oswald to legitimatize them by killing JFK, is truly chilling.