Loading
Barber’s sassy Stephanie out acts Churchill, who could use more comedic and charismatic gloss in the Travolta role, and the thing that might have carried the musical through its humdrum sequences – the magnetism, the spectacle, the epiphanic transcendence of losing yourself in dance – doesn’t quite make itself felt on the cramped Athenaeum stage.
Saturday Night Fever does provide visual interest – elaborate projections, colourful period costume, spots of impressive choreography – and it isn’t so awful you want to “burn that mother down”, as they say in Disco Inferno. But there’s little synergy between music and storytelling, and it isn’t a jukebox musical I can heartily recommend.
Reviewed by Cameron Woodhead
MUSIC
Travis ★★★
Festival Hall, January 10
Scottish band Travis haven’t toured Australia since 2001. The reason, says lively elfin frontman Fran Healy to a crowd loud with expats, was their management: “So we sacked them.”
The four-piece are here to perform their 1999 breakthrough The Man Who, in its jangly, melancholy-pop entirety, followed by a set cherry-picked from their back catalogue.
A band ticking off a track list can feel perfunctory, but Travis poke fun at this by going full PowerPoint presentation mode – literally. With a laptop on stage, the white-haired Healy introduces each song via a slide show and recollections of it. It sounds like a slog, but his easy charisma makes it a sweet romp through the band’s journey from students in Glasgow to indie pop stars of the early 2000s.
Travis frontman Fran Healey at Festival Hall. Credit: Martin Philbey
Opener Writing to Reach You was apparently inspired by Healy’s gas heater, Franz Kafka and Wonderwall; The Fear was written above a pub called The Horseshoe (the Scots in the crowd cheer); As You Are is about a poem an old man handed Healy on a train. Before Driftwood, Healy says he came up with the melody while doing the dishes, then plays the original voice memo of it. It’s a lot of fun.
Though Healy is a great raconteur — and his voice remains lovely — Travis’ music still isn’t about much.
Healey takes the Festival Hall crowd through the stories of the songs from Writing to Reach You.Credit: Martin Philbey
Gaslight, from the band’s 2024 LP L.A. Times, is a response to someone who wronged Healy, but the vague lyrics on screen locate no such venom. Fortunately, there are earworms in Why Does it Always Rain on Me? – which has the crowd pogoing – a stirring Side and closing highlight Sing to keep spirits up.
“It’s less about the songs and more about the memories we attach to them,” says Healy, perhaps a little too insightfully at one point. At least tonight will be a nice one.
Reviewed by Marcus Teague
Find out the next TV, streaming series and movies to add to your must-sees. Get The Watchlist delivered every Thursday.
