Eclipse
★★
The kindest thing to say about Eclipse is that perhaps it would have been better programmed at the end of the festival rather than the beginning. Situated on and around a catwalk bisecting the Lower Town Hall, it was a loud and irreverent face-off, vogue-off and dance-off between two lip-syncing yin and yang drag personas, narrated by a flamboyant character, who was called the Joker. Or was it the Jester? It was hard to glean. Whichever, they perhaps had more in common with the lovechild of Mama Morton and Carmen Miranda than the lugubrious Joaquin Phoenix or the maniacal Heath Ledger in their respective Oscar-winning roles. And they also provided the highlight of the show when they sang live.
Otherwise, it was a parade of primping, preening and posing, with any underlying narrative thrust hard to discern. A voiceover announcement pre-show warned of potential technical issues and to be prepared for underdevelopment as it was still a preview. But if a show is only running for three nights, do you really have the luxury of being undercooked on your opening? As a closing night celebratory drag-off, this could have been just the ticket; as an opening night drawcard, it was a little disappointing.
The Rivers Sing
★★★★
On the riverbank outside Hamer Hall the Festival kicked off officially with welcome speeches and an introduction to this work from Deborah Cheetham Fraillon AO (who co-created it with Byron J Scullin and Thomas Supple). This large-scale audio work is the artists’ response to the Birrarung and Maribyrnong Rivers, timed to welcome the evening and recomposed in each iteration.
To stand and just be bathed in the, at times, overwhelming soundscape is a rather magical experience, with snippets of Language interwoven, but the one word ‘Wominjeka’ being the most prominent. It runs throughout the Festival at sunset and last for about 10 minutes.
Birrarung – along the riverbank, Saturday 1 to Sunday 16 June.
Counting and Cracking
★★★★★
You know when everyone tells you how wonderful a production is and you’re almost certain you’re going to hate it or, at the least be sadly disappointed, because nothing can live up to such hype? Yes, well that’s simply not the case with S. Shakthidharan’s extraordinary three-and-a-half-hour slice of theatrical splendour. This epic Sri Lankan tale, crossing geographical borders and the generational divide, is every bit as terrific as they say.
Read: Review: Counting and Cracking, Belvoir
After acclaimed seasons in its original 2019 Sydney Festival run, followed by one in Adelaide and a detour via Edinburgh and Birmingham, Melbourne is lucky to finally get the chance to see it in the surrounds of Melbourne University’s state-of-the-art new Union Theatre. For exquisite stagecraft – pulsating with wit, invention and charm – lashings of humour, laced with an in-depth history lesson told clearly and concisely (yes, even with that 210-minute runtime including two intervals), and accomplished and heartfelt performances all round, this is pretty much as good as it gets.
And better yet, its run extends beyond the Festival, so you have until 23 June to see it.
Union Theatre, Melbourne University, Friday 31 May to Sunday 23 June.
Food
★★★1/2
There are many aspects to praise and chew on in Geoff Sobelle’s one-man absurdist deep dive into the why and the wherefores of what we eat, how we eat and why we eat what we do. To begin with there’s his admirably relaxed relationship with the audience, both the 40 or so exalted guests who sit around the huge banquet table that forms the centrepiece of the stage and the stage itself, and the onlooking audience from the regular seats.
Then there’s the sleight of hand, the magical “did he or did he not actually just swallow that?” – which marks the long (some may say too long) middle section in which Sobelle appears to devour everything in sight – from bowls of apples to packets of cigarettes, a mobile phone and the cigarette packet itself.
And most of all there’s the final section, where the table is transformed into a miniature landscape, and from it appear herds of bison and farmlands, only to be displaced in favour of the means of production – oil rigs, factories, trains and juggernauts. It’s quite the feat. And the visual spectacle.
But it takes a while to get there. The middle “eating everything in sight” section notwithstanding, this is preceded by a more familiar restaurant type scenario, where Sobelle hands menus around arbitrarily, takes orders and then proceeds to magically produce the request – including summoning up a quick trip to the Arctic to fish. But when you realise that, as he hands the menu out, he delivers a sotto voce instruction to ‘pick seven’ or whichever number he wants next, the whole exercise loses its impact. And feels a little pointless.
There’s a clever and diverting show in here – shave off half an hour of extraneous business and it would be a punchier one too.
The Lawler, Southbank Theatre, Friday 31 May to Saturday 8 June.
You, Beauty
★★★
When is contemporary dance actually an art installation with a couple of dancers (Samakshi Sidhu and Enzo Nazario) roaming around within it? That’s a question that could be asked of the latest production from Chunky Move, a visual spectacle that makes tremendous use of the cavernous empty space of the Immigration Museum’s Long Room, and then completely subverts that space by filling it with a diaphanous inflatable that balloons, deflates and mutates, changing colour and shape, and becoming an overwhelming presence and character in itself.
After the initial seductive pas de deux, the creation literally opens up to swallow the protagonists before roiling and billowing in a mesmerising orgiastic sequence before stilling again to invite the audience inside too.
Within its welcoming cocoon (more Jonah’s whale than womb-like) the dancers resume their slow seduction and bring a small portable keyboard into their play. As to the meaning of it all? Outside of the push and pull of the male and female dance of romantic dominance and submission… who can say? But that inflatable is an absolute winner.
The Long Room, Immigration Museum, Friday 31 May to Sunday 16 June.
Big Name, No Blankets
★★★★1/2
Another show that originated in Sydney (in January this year) was this dramatisation of the true story of the Warumpi Band – the First Peoples rock and rollers who hit the heights and the headlines in the 1980s, notable as the original First Peoples rock band to sing in Language, touring internationally and supporting Midnight Oil.
Read: Performance review: Big Name, No Blankets, Sydney Festival
From the pen of Andrea James, and directed by Rachael Maza and Anyupa Butcher, daughter of original Warumpi Band member Sammy Tjapanangka Butcher, this is as rousing and heart-warming a musical as you could wish for. The audience was regularly on its feet, clapping and stomping along to the numerous rock numbers performed by the in situ band and the six main performers, who were all accomplished musicians and singers.
Taj Pigram, as the charismatic frontman, George Rrurrambu Burarrwanga (replacing Googoorewon Knox from the Sydney iteration), was vibrant, magnetic and exploding with energy. This talented singer was seen earlier this year in the arresting Adelaide Festival centrepiece Baleen Moondjan, but if he isn’t already leading his own rock band, he really should be.
It seems almost picky to knock half a star off the five-star review ArtsHub‘s reviewer gave the show in January, but the delivery of the dialogue isn’t always as audible or well projected as the music. It doesn’t ruin the enjoyment by any means; indeed, as Thomas Hardy said of Tess, ‘It was the touch of the imperfect upon the would-be perfect that gave the sweetness, because it was that which gave the humanity.’
Big Name, No Blankets was both sweet and bursting with humanity.
Melbourne Town Hall, Friday 31 May to Sunday 2 June.
