South Korean tenor Won Whi Choi plays her lover Ruggero, and though the character is a bit of a sap, Choi possesses a true Puccini tenor sound (think Pavarotti et al). With a thrilling top and gleaming colour throughout, he’s vocally flawless.
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In the supporting roles of Prunier and Lisette, Queenslanders Douglas Kelly and Nina Korbe are perfect. They actually have chemistry! Kelly is charming – a natural actor – and possesses excellent evenness in range and tone. He is a young tenor to watch. Korbe is stunning, her soprano glorious at the top and her characterisation delightful.
The duo of Howarth/Choi is less successful than Kelly/Korbe, though it’s hard to tell what’s to blame. Is it that Choi appears wooden, or that the character is a simpleton? Is Howarth’s Magda one-dimensional, or is the character merely unsympathetic? Either way, no one benefits from the uneven plot. Still, it’s an appreciated choice by Victorian Opera, in a year otherwise stacked with Puccini favourites.
Reviewed by Bridget Davies
MUSICAL
Six ★★★★
By Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss, Comedy Theatre, until October 20
Pop musicals and Tudor England are having a moment. Shakespeare’s tragedy of star-crossed lovers was rewritten to popular acclaim in the recent jukebox musical & Juliet. Surely, adaptations don’t get poppier than Juliet waking up next to Romeo’s corpse and singing Britney Spears’ Baby One More Time?
Only a cast of genuine triple threats could pull Six off, and they succeed with exuberance.Credit: James D Morgan / Getty Images
Well, having now seen Six – a musical romp that reincarnates the six wives of Henry VIII as pop divas – I’d have to say & Juliet has been pipped at the post for the poppiest show ever inspired by the 16th century.
It’s sort of a history lesson wrapped in a live concert.
The six wives arrive onstage with the oomph of a girl band in front of a home crowd. They’re each bedecked in magnificent, glitteringly anachronistic faux-period costume, as if Gabriella Slade had waved some Elizabethan wand over a popstar’s wardrobe.
They’ve gathered, as they always do, to compete over who’s the most tragic queen. And it’s hilarious to watch the six queen bees at this pity party sass each other, or lob brutal, Mean Girls-style put-downs around, before bursting into catchy original songs across a range of pop styles.
There’s everything from Beyonce-like R&B, with backup vocals and sharp dance moves, to tonsil-baring power ballads. One number even rescores Greensleeves into a turbo-folk anthem.
Deidre Khoo (centre) as Anne BoleynCredit: James D Morgan / Getty Images
Lyrics and dialogue adopt the register of performative youth. Anne Boleyn (Diedre Khoo) raps about her marriage causing the English Reformation thus:
“tried to elope
but the pope said nope…
the rules were so outdated
us two wanted to get X-rated
soon, excommunicated
everybody chill, it’s totes God’s will”
Which is totes funny, though when the contest devolves into trauma Olympics (and the queens start comparing the number of their miscarriages to win) the lone survivor, Henry’s last wife Catherine Parr (Giorgia Kennedy), launches a feminist “historemix”, liberating them all from King Henry’s shadow.
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No weak link exists among the remaining queens. Kimberley Hodgson as Catherine of Aragon, Loren Hunter as Jane Seymour, Zelia Rose Kitoko as Anna of Cleves and Chelsea Dawson as Katherine Howard each brings a vital spark to individual highlights, with enough left in the tank for high-energy ensemble work – smooth backup vocals, perfectly synchronised choreography, rapid-fire comic repartee – that, along with rockstar digital set and lighting, really ratchets up the concert atmosphere.
Only a cast of genuine triple threats could pull Six off, and they succeed with such exuberance I wouldn’t be surprised if (just like pop concerts) loyal fans return again and again.
Reviewed by Cameron Woodhead
THEATRE
Apologia ★★★
Nicola Gunn, Malthouse Theatre, until August 18
It’s wonderful to see Nicola Gunn making theatre back in Melbourne. The performance artist has been based in Europe for years but developed her inimitable style here, in works such as In Spite of Myself, Hello My Name Is and Piece for Person with Ghetto-Blaster.
Apologia is the second part of a trilogy exploring translation and interpretation.Credit: Gregory Lorenzutti
Surrealist theatre and physical comedy inform that style and predominated during the earliest phase of Gunn’s career. It wasn’t until she collapsed art into life and started making the live equivalent of autofiction – ‘autotheatre’, if you will – that her distinctive brilliance coalesced into (pardon my French) an oeuvre.
Gunn’s Apologia is the second part of a trilogy exploring translation and interpretation, and it springs from her fantasy of becoming a French actress.
Absurdity lurks in the premise – Gunn isn’t French and can’t speak the language – though she has an entrée in the voice of Séverine Magois, a bracingly opinionated French translator.
We don’t meet Magois in the flesh. She’s initially present through vaping noises emanating from a speaker. Then Gunn arrives, tells off her invisible interlocutor for vaping inside, and begins a wide-ranging conversation with Magois’ recorded voice about realising her ambitions.
Taka Takiguchi and Yumi Umiumare in a scene from Apologia at Malthouse Theatre.Credit: Gregory Lorenzutti
Offbeat humour ripples through what becomes a defence – an apologia – of subjectivity and authenticity, and an interrogation of how language shapes those ideas.
Complexities deepen when the scene shifts to two Japanese tourists disappointed by Paris (Yumi Umiumare and Taka Takiguchi), performed in Japanese with English subtitles.
So-called “Paris Syndrome” is a psychological phenomenon first documented in Japan: it describes the depression and disillusionment experienced when the City of Love doesn’t match the romanticised idea of it that tourists are expecting.
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Does Gunn’s wild desire to be a French actress represent a theatrical version of Paris Syndrome? Well, there’s frustration and despair at the disparity between expectation and reality, but she does get to live fragments of her dream.
Scenes where she appears in a French film (as a woman grief-stricken at learning of her mother’s death) possess a poise, visual stylishness and emotive intensity that suggests the real deal, before the piece abandons verbal for visual language in a charming, entirely silent conclusion.
If Apologia doesn’t feel entirely satisfying and complete as a standalone, it’s strikingly original theatre that will stimulate reflection on the philosophy behind performance and translation. How do you translate your ‘self’ (or someone else’s) into another language? How does language itself influence our experience of reality, of art?
These questions are probed through a tragicomic blend of intimacy and artifice, in a production enlivened by a talented international team of design collaborators, including Emma Valente and Kate Davis from The Rabble.
Let’s hope some arts festival programs the trilogy on completion. As Apologia shows us time and again, context is crucial to the act of interpretation, and I’m not sure the show’s true worth can be appreciated without it.
Reviewed by Cameron Woodhead
MUSIC
Maxim Vengerov in Recital ★★★★★
Hamer Hall, August 7
Had I thought about it in advance, I would have predicted Maxim Vengerov’s recital would be a five-star affair. After all, Vengerov is among the few candidates for world’s best violinist, and at 49 he is absolutely in his pomp. And so it came to pass – Vengerov and accompanist Polina Osetinskaya were sublime, and were rewarded with a standing ovation.
Maxim Vengerov performs at Hamer Hall on August 8, 2024.Credit: Nicole Cleary
This was the fourth time I’ve heard Vengerov in Melbourne, and it was the best, two hours of bliss. The program was divided between Russia and France, with two works by Prokofiev in the first half, and Franck and Ravel in the second.
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The Five Melodies provided a languorous, lyrical opening before the familiar spiky Prokofiev rhythms and harmonies appeared in the bleak but gripping first Violin Sonata. Then came a complete contrast in the poetic Franck sonata, a work of gentle beauty delivered with elegance and subtle refinement.
Vengerov made so light of any technical challenges, so unostentatiously, that one could doubt they were there. But they certainly were – for example, ferocious and flawless double stopping, wondrously pure and accurate harmonics, thrilling bravura runs, delicate dynamics, effortless projection and ravishing pianissimos that floated out to fill the hall. He emphasised artistry over pyrotechnics – but then came Ravel’s vigorously virtuoso Tzigane and all the dramatic flair one could wish for.
Osetinskaya, clearly a marvellous musician in her own right, was a delicate and sensitive accompanist, though once or twice I felt she was too unobtrusive.
The pair graced the audience with four encores: Prokofiev’s march from The Love for Three Oranges, two lushly romantic bonbons in Kreisler’s Liebesleid and Liebesfreud, and the big theme from Rachmaninov’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini.
Reviewed by Barney Zwartz
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