OPERA
Orpheus and Eurydice ★★★★
Regent Theatre, till December 5
A “death-defying act” is perhaps a moniker for circus acrobatics, however the identical might hardly be stated of opera. How then do the 2 come collectively so intrinsically and impressively?
Opera Australia’s manufacturing of Orpheus and EurydiceCredit: Jeff Busby
It helps to have a libretto centred on a deed of the identical nature, as with Gluck’s model of the Greek delusion Orpheus and Eurydice.
It’s a narrative that’s been advised a thousand methods via each potential medium; movie, TV, musicals, performs, books, even video video games. This 2019 manufacturing, by Opera Queensland and Brisbane-based up to date circus firm Circa, has significantly finished the rounds, most lately to rave critiques on the 2025 Edinburgh Festival. Melbourne’s reception ought to be no totally different.
Premiering in 1762, Orfeo ed Euridice is sung in Italian however was vastly influenced by 18th-century French model. Gluck reduce out all of the virtuoso singing-for-the-sake-of-it stuff and saved the story easy.
The position of Orpheus, initially written for a castrato, is right here sung by British countertenor Iestyn Davies.
Orpheus and Eurydice is a narrative that’s been advised a thousand methods via each potential medium.Credit: Jeff Busby
Great countertenors are uncommon; they’ve a singular capability to supply a strong falsetto sound, akin to the color of a feminine mezzo-soprano. Davies is kind of extraordinary – his depth by no means wavers, his voice heat and lyrical. Australian soprano Samantha Clarke sings each Eurydice and the god of affection, Amore, and is superb as each.
Conductor Dane Lam joined this travelling circus from the start and is by now very conversant in and clearly keen on the work. Orchestra Victoria play buoyantly underneath his steerage, with only some moments of overpowering quantity.
The director and designer, Circa’s Yaron Lifschitz, has set this manufacturing in an asylum, which is perhaps a barely drained theatrical trope, but it surely works moderately properly – we’re not sure of what’s actual and what’s imagined.
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Particularly arresting are the surtitles projected onto the again wall, showing and fading as if ideas swirling in Orpheus’ head. The acrobatics are actually beautiful feats of athleticism, solely sometimes pulling focus however largely aiding the drama.
Opening night time did appear to endure from some general staging missteps, with the finale bunched up on one aspect, and different moments off-centre or with actions barely out of time.
This is an opera in your culturally curious good friend who’s by no means really been however perhaps enjoys the ballet or appreciates theatre. At 80 minutes’ length there’s no time to be bored, and with acrobats actually flying in all places, there’s no fear that the generally stagnant nature of opera will put anybody to sleep. Come for the pearl-clutching stunts, keep for the gorgeous music.
Reviewed by Bridget Davies
THEATRE
Sabotage ★★★★
The Motley Bauhaus, till December 6
Every every so often Melbourne’s indie theatre scene throws up one thing destined for a much bigger stage. I hope that’s the case with Harrison Clark’s Sabotage. The two-hander writhes with comedic life, even because it probes loneliness and trauma, and expertise scouts and humanities programmers ought to make a beeline for this very quick season.
Declan Magee and Harrison Clark star in Sabotage
The play hinges on a shock reunion between a younger Protagonist (Declan Magee) and an Antagonist (Clark) in an airport lounge, as the previous prepares to depart Australia sure for a brand new life in London.
For fairly a while, you’re undecided what’s occurring. This Gen Z duo seem to know an important deal about each other – maybe an excessive amount of – and the bantering relationship between them has a youthful intimacy rippling with uncooked disclosure, shared cultural touchstones, and unstated assumed information, leaving the viewers half-in, half-out of the dialog. The script is a compelling mix of voyeuristic and enigmatic – filled with overheard dialogue, whereas retaining sufficient contextual ambiguity to keep away from the obviousness of paint-by-numbers realism.
Power imbalances emerge, together with a historical past of parental abuse and psychological sickness, as dramatic battle – cloaked within the mysterious connection between the 2 figures – continues to deepen. Who are these folks? Are they brothers? Are they lovers? Why is the Antagonist attempting so laborious to cease his interlocutor getting on that aircraft? Where is all of it going?
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You wouldn’t get invested in solutions with out sturdy writing and charismatic performances, and the actors are matched like items of a jigsaw. Magee embodies a delicate younger man whose move in direction of identification and self-awareness has been stopped. He’s been tormented into withdrawal by grief, insecurity and defensive melancholy, and Clark baits him in direction of perception with sly wit and chaotic company; an surprising tangle of kindness and need.
Director Maya Britbart Ellazam has drawn out nuanced and emotionally clever performances. Intimacy co-ordinator Eliza Grundy guides the actors into the form of breath-catching bodily efficiency you used to get routinely earlier than intimacy co-ordinators existed. The design is barely there, however that’s suited to the play’s liminal encounter.
Sure, Sabotage might use a trim and there’s part of me that desperately needed the play to protect its indeterminacy, slightly than to break down into only one factor with a easy message. Arguably, the ending does the latter, although with out mawkishness or sermonising.
It’s a proficient drama, broaching darkish materials with sensitivity and a light-weight comedian contact, illuminating the challenges of coming of age at the moment in a manner that speaks with the distinctive inflections of that cohort, whereas feeling broadly relatable to everybody.
Reviewed by Cameron Woodhead
THEATRE
Nihilistic Optimism on Trampolines ★★
Theatre Works, till December 6
Kasey Barratt’s Nihilistic Optimism on Trampolines takes a seminal second within the historical past of Gothic literature – the writing of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein – and reimagines it unfolding within the current day, at a trampoline park throughout a thunderstorm.
Nihilistic Optimism on Trampolines at Theatre Works is an imaginative retelling of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.Credit: Sian Quinn Dowler
The present stitches collectively unlikely components – trampolining, TikTok-length choreography, a dwell rock band and an authentic play spliced with excerpts from Shelley’s novel and letters – and I admired the boldness, ambition and willingness to experiment that this younger ensemble convey.
Is it any good? Not actually. It’s a wierd and misshapen creation which, in contrast to Shelley’s traditional, typically seems like lower than the sum of its components.
Famously, Shelley started writing Frankenstein aged 18, as a part of a ghost story competitors initiated by Lord Byron at Lake Geneva in the course of the inclement summer season of 1816. (The occasion additionally birthed the primary vampire fiction in English, John Polidori’s The Vampyre.)
Barratt morphs the figures current – Mary (Gabrielle Ward), her fiance Percy Shelley (Bek Schilling), her stepsister Claire Clairmont (Sophie Graham Jones), Lord Byron (Eleanor Golding) and Byron’s physician John Polidori (Zoe Wakelin) – into bored workers at Trampoline World.
The present – set in a trampoline park – stitches collectively unlikely components.Credit: Sian Quinn Dowler
A lackadaisical teen film vibe cuts in opposition to gothic atmospherics, and Barratt’s script spends too lengthy establishing the cheerless routines and post-industrial ennui of younger drudges at a leisure park. Most of the water cooler dialog, petty energy performs and furtive work flings aren’t particularly humorous or dramatically compelling, although occasional flashes of camp do lighten the drear.
Things choose up when Victor Frankenstein’s creature (Jett Chudleigh) boings into view. Encounters between the younger writer and her creation, utilizing dialogue from the novel in addition to bodily theatre and dance, have an eerie lustre.
Yet in some way the act of reassertion within the face of a historic erasure (Percy Shelley was initially credited because the writer of Frankenstein) doesn’t go all-in.
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The climax is shadowy and under-realised, and I might have liked to have seen the monster go on a murderous rampage in opposition to the male characters (most performed in drag) and for feminist fury to be unleashed with maximal power via textual content and stage motion.
Part of the issue is an inexperienced solid. Performance components from choreography to microphone method might use extra precision and confidence. And the script, too, must refine its themes and junk ineffective dialogue.
These artists might have a protracted strategy to go, however they’ve a very long time to get there. And the vary of abilities on show – from the athleticism of the trampolining to the three musicians jamming dwell accompaniment – bodes properly for growing a singular theatrical model.
Reviewed by Cameron Woodhead
THEATRE
A Christmas Carol ★★★★
Comedy Theatre, till December 24
For a fourth 12 months, A Christmas Carol graces the stage in Melbourne’s East End theatre district. The present has firmly established itself as a family-friendly custom, and it delivers Charles Dickens’ festive ghost story with such allure that it’s unattainable to be jaded or egocentric or unmoved to charity in its presence, nonetheless Scrooge-like you could be.
Lachy Hulme performs Scrooge as a form of Santa-gone-wrong.Credit: Justin McManus
Dickens’ parable was all the time designed to awaken social conscience. In his personal time, the 1834 Poor Law slashed the price of poverty reduction by forcing able-bodied paupers into workhouses, the place they carried out laborious labour underneath nightmarish situations in alternate for meals and shelter.
In ours, one-third of Australian households face meals insecurity, in response to the 2025 Foodbank Hunger Report, and this manufacturing has inspired audiences through the years to donate hundreds of thousands to FareShare, a charity that prepares and distributes meals to these doing it robust at Christmas.
As Dickens put it within the authentic story: “I’ve all the time considered Christmas … [as] a time when women and men appear by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think about folks beneath them as in the event that they actually had been fellow-passengers to the grave, and never one other race of creatures sure on different journeys.”
That’s an perception the inveterate miser Ebenezer Scrooge have to be haunted into having for himself, over and once more, and the one factor the present does change up yearly is the movie star taking part in Scrooge.
Claire Warrillow and Lachy Hulme in a scene from the 2025 season of A Christmas Carol.Credit: Justin McManus
Each actor who’s tackled the position has put a particular spin on the character’s unlikely highway to redemption. David Wenham (2022) gave us a crusty, broken-hearted romantic. Game of Thrones star Owen Teale (2023) hid Scrooge’s sorrow behind a wall of rage so excessive he regarded set to behead Christmas itself. And final 12 months, Erik Thomson (Packed to the Rafters, Hercules, Xena: Warrior Princess) performed Ebenezer as an emotional shut-in, flinching at even the suggestion of vulnerability in others, lest he be compelled to simply accept his personal humanity.
Lachy Hulme is as suited to baddies as heroes – taking part in Immortan Joe in Mad Max: Furiosa (2024), and Macduff in a 2006 movie of Macbeth set in Melbourne’s felony underworld – and his Scrooge holds a darkish mirror to the spirit of Christmas.
This is Ebenezer as a form of Santa-gone-wrong. It’s as if the large man with the sack had been abruptly made redundant as a younger Mr Claus within the gig financial system, solely to moonlight as a moneylender for therefore lengthy that the masks grew to become his face.
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That’s fascinating to observe and makes Scrooge’s unbelievable transformation appear weirdly believable, as his myopically misplaced the Aristocracy will get transferred from the world of transaction to one in every of emotional connection.
As all the time, Matthew Warchus’ manufacturing is a bell-ringing, carol-singing delight. I’ve seen it 4 instances now, and if it continues to be a characteristic of my very own Christmases – previous, current and future – I’ll depend myself fortunate.
With uplifting music and dance, elegant costume and design, a spot of viewers participation, buoyant performances and a swiftly paced narrative, it’s an ideal Christmas present for theatre lovers of all ages.
Reviewed by Cameron Woodhead
MUSIC
Franz Ferdinand ★★★★
Live on the Gardens, Royal Botanic Gardens, November 28
It’s a Friday night time in Melbourne on the fringe of summer season – so naturally, the outfit du jour is raincoats and ponchos. Drizzle turns into a gradual downpour via the night time, however Scottish band Franz Ferdinand feels proper at dwelling – “like taking part in in a park in Glasgow”, says frontman Alex Kapranos.
Franz Ferdinand carry out at Live on the Gardens on Saturday night time.Credit: Richard Clifford
A little bit of rain doesn’t deter the band, or the group, from partying prefer it’s 2004.
Franz Ferdinand had been poster boys for what’s affectionately (or derisively, relying on who’s saying it) known as “indie sleaze” – that noughties period of angular guitar, skinny denims and an insatiable thirst for the dancefloor. Kapranos, one in every of two remaining authentic members, is perhaps in his 50s now, however all which means is that he’s grown even additional into his sonorous baritone, all the time wealthy past its years.
The band launched its sixth album, The Human Fear, this 12 months. It’s a combined bag: some songs, such because the hammy Hooked, are higher forgotten. Others embody flashes of recent and outdated inspiration – on Black Eyelashes, Kapranos nods to his Greek heritage by taking part in a bouzouki, which additionally makes an look within the dwell set. At one level within the night, all 5 musicians play the drum equipment collectively.
Unsurprisingly, it’s the sooner hits that get the loudest cheers: No You Girls and Do You Want To are as irresistible and hook-laden as ever.
Alex Kapranos and the band – or the group – aren’t deterred by a little bit of rain.Credit: Richard Clifford
There’s a little bit of self-indulgence on show – the immediately recognisable introduction of the band’s best-known monitor, Take Me Out, is drawn out for over a minute – however all is forgiven when it rumbles into its iconic tempo shift, constructing in direction of what stays one in every of indie sleaze’s best moments.
The present goes on afterwards, but it surely’s laborious to beat listening to a tune like that dwell, dancing ourselves clear within the pouring rain and feeling the years wash away.
Reviewed by Giselle Au-Nhien Nguyen
Adrian Sherriff.Credit: Tobias Titz
JAZZ
Adrian Sherriff’s Kalachakra ★★★★
The JazzLab, November 30
In May final 12 months, multi-instrumentalist Adrian Sherriff launched a marvellous new ensemble – Kalachakra – performing music that fused up to date jazz with south Indian classical traditions.
Now, Sherriff has unveiled the subsequent incarnation of Kalachakra, with a recent addition to the line-up: koto participant Miyama McQueen-Tokita. As a outcome, the group’s major focus has shifted from India to Japan.
Sherriff is primarily a jazz artist, however his fascination for conventional Asian music has led to a decades-long research of classical devices from each nations.
His mastery of the shakuhachi (Japanese bamboo flute) was on vivid show on Sunday night time, when Kalachakra 2.0 made its debut at JazzLab. The live performance opened with Sherriff’s preparations of two of the earliest works written for shakuhachi and koto, courting again greater than 400 years. Sherriff’s exhalations on shakuhachi gave the impression of light gusts of wind, whereas the three string devices (koto, bass and cello) shaped a splendidly atmospheric, textural backdrop.
On Rokudan, the koto and shakuhachi moved in stately tandem, creating an virtually ritualistic really feel earlier than making manner for Jay Dabgar’s tablas, snapping and fluttering in an animated solo. Chidori, too, had the texture of an historic ceremony, the string devices overlaid with McQueen-Tokita’s swish vocals.
Not all of the tunes had been centuries outdated. Fragments (a brand-new piece by McQueen-Tokita) allowed the Australian-Japanese composer to show a extra up to date aspect to her artistry, improvising nimbly on the koto and welcoming her colleagues to solo in flip over the tune’s swish ¾ sway. Sherriff’s taking part in on this tune was breathtaking, his bass trombone shuddering and leaping throughout intervals with extraordinary management and precision.
Peggy Lee (on cello) and Rohan Dasika (bass) made a formidable pairing all through, typically working in unison as they navigated complicated melodic or rhythmic motifs, and utilizing prolonged methods to create expressive slides, sighs and whistling harmonics.
The night time’s last quantity, Song of the Waterboy, started with the jovial twang of Sherriff’s morsing (Indian jaw harp), establishing a playfully bluesy groove that noticed the entire ensemble reduce free, swaggering and extemporising with seen delight.
Reviewed by Jessica Nicholas
MUSIC
Mirra – Norwegian Tradition Reimagined ★★★★
Primrose Potter Salon, Melbourne Recital Centre, November 27
Growing up within the Hardanger fjord area in Norway’s west, Benedicte Maurseth developed twin passions which have continued to propel her inventive imaginative and prescient and profession. One is the normal nine-string Hardanger fiddle; the opposite is the pure fantastic thing about the huge Hardanger mountain plateau.
Benedicte Maurseth’s newest album, Mirra, is impressed by wild reindeer.Credit: Agnete Brun
These two passions are instantly intertwined on Maurseth’s newest album, Mirra, impressed by the habitat, behaviour and migration patterns of untamed reindeer.
At the Recital Centre on Thursday, Maurseth led an outstanding quartet via a program that – just like the album – adopted a seasonal cycle. We started within the depths of winter, the place reindeer run in round patterns to maintain heat, or lie completely nonetheless within the snow because the wind whips over them. Mats Eilertsen’s bowed bass harmonics and Haakon Morch Stene’s rolling percussion instructed the previous, whereas Morten Qvenild’s glistening electronics and Maurseth’s swish fiddle phrases effortlessly evoked the latter.
Spring introduced new life (The Calf Rises) with a ravishing fiddle and piano duet, whereas Summer Pastures coaxed the music into extra rhythmic territory, with electrical bass, insistent vibraphone and a trance-like, minimalist drum sample. Reindeer Call included the sampled voice of a reindeer herder, nestled inside a thicket of summary, improvised textures that regularly coalesced right into a gradual, shadowy Hunting March.
The reindeer nudged themselves into the foreground at numerous instances (through area recordings of their communicative grunts), as did different native wildlife from the Hardanger area. Heilo featured the cawing of the Eurasian plover as a recurring motif, buoyed by Maurseth’s fiddle because it glided weightlessly on invisible thermals.
Often one composition segued into the subsequent with out pause, including to the sense that we had been immersed on this mysterious and awe-inspiring panorama. Occasionally the digital components dominated and overwhelmed the sound of the fiddle, smothering the resonant shimmer of its sympathetic strings. But for probably the most half this was an totally entrancing evocation of the pure world in all its fierce magnificence, majesty and vulnerability.
Reviewed by Jessica Nicholas
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