Updated ,first published
MUSIC
Donald Runnicles conducts Mahler’s Sixth Symphony
Sydney Opera House, April 9
Reviewed by PETER McCALLUM
★★★★½
In welcoming the audience before the concert, violinist Sophie Cole pointed to the aptness of Mahler’s Symphony No. 6 in our own times for the way it gives the experience of being “swept up by forces beyond our own control”.
That impression came most powerfully in this performance by the Sydney Symphony Orchestra under Donald Runnicles, augmented by musicians of the Australian National Academy of Music (ANAM), during the work’s 30-minute, wrestling finale.
This movement strives three times for an optimistic outcome before reaching the enlightened but tragic realisation that, on this occasion, this will not be possible, that the individual will go down.
Mahler brutally underlined the point by ending the first two attempts at surging optimism with literal blows of a hammer, which he indicates should make a “short, powerful but dull, echoing blow of non-metallic character (like an axe blow)”.
There were originally three hammer blows, but, acting with the parsimony of genius, Mahler cut the last one. This allowed Runnicles to preserve the tension to the end, unleashing the final A minor chord, which, as a motif, has wavered from major to minor over the entire 90-minute span with wrenching force.
In the first movement, Runnicles maintained momentum with unyielding insistence, holding, but sublimating, the pulse as it transitions from the opening march to the lyrical second idea, and waiting until the close of that idea before allowing the driving force to ease.
It eased further, dreamily, in the quiet pastoral section of the development, but the unrelenting quality of the music elsewhere left an ambiguous feeling, crucial to the sense of alienation Mahler creates, as to whether the energy is internally generated or externally imposed. This movement had unstoppable forward drive even at the expense of some roughness of detail.
The second movement, with shrill mocking woodwind and sagging parodies from the horns, was a sardonic take on that drive. Runnicles made the third movement the work’s emotional centre. Over a bed of muted lower strings, the violins played the opening melody with delicate spareness, leaving horn player Samuel Jacobs to adorn it, on its subsequent appearance, with velvety smoothness.
The woodwind players balanced the moment of idyllic quiet before the final swelling climax like sunlight through mist, and the orchestra unfolded one lush harmonic modulation after another as the music eventually subsided into deep serenity.
After the searching opening melody of the finale, its introductory section groped through darkness like an awakening serpent. Runnicles led the quick sections with gripping intensity, the strings, under concertmaster Andrew Haveron, maintaining bristling unanimity.
As far as uncontrolled forces go, these had many flashes of terror, but, in their fateful closing bars, proved awe-inspiring.
THEATRE
Anastasia
Sydney Lyric Theatre, April 10
Until July 17
Reviewed by HARRIET CUNNINGHAM
★★★★½
Rags to riches, revolution, lost identity and escape from peril … The story of the Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia has it all. The youngest daughter of Tsar Nicholas II, Anastasia was rumoured to be the only member of the Romanov royal family to have survived execution by Bolshevik forces in July 1918. The rumours grew into a grand mystery, with at least 10 women coming forward claiming to be the last of the Romanovs.
Anastasia picks up the legend and gives it the Broadway treatment with a great book by author Terrence McNally, a reliable string of showstoppers by the composer of Ragtime, Stephen Flaherty, plus a starry cast, truckloads of costumes, dazzling set pieces and vocal fireworks. Resistance is useless.
The Australian incarnation of this international phenomenon is hard to fault. Georgina Hopson is an ideal Anya, with a voice of immense dynamic and expressive range and a winning stage presence. Robert Tripolino (the lovable rogue Dimitry) and Joshua Robson (dutiful soldier Gleb) compete, dramatically and vocally, for the audience’s heart, with Robson nearly winning it in the set piece Still.
Rodney Dobson as Vlad, aka Count Popov, works magic as a character who could clearly upstage the main action at any given moment. This is especially true when paired with his Countess Lily, Rhonda Burchmore, who gleefully hams it up to the max. Finally, there is Nancye Hayes as the Dowager Empress, the gracious lynchpin around whom the story unfolds.
The creative team brings the historical sweep of Anya and Anastasia’s tale to the stage with great ingenuity, shifting us across three decades and hundreds of miles using everything in the showbiz toolbox. Most notable are the projections (video design by Aaron Rhyne, with set design by Alexander Dodge), which appear behind the static, architectural wall of windows, doors and archways.
In conjunction with lighting (Donald Holder) and costumes (Linda Cho) they create instant changes of location, from the streets of St Petersburg to Bolshevik command to Paris – without upstaging the action. That’s except for the getaway scene, where a skeleton train carriage on a revolve is set in motion by rolling landscapes in the background. It’s one of the most successful uses of projections for storytelling that I have seen.
The other element that stands out is the choreography (Peggy Hickey) which, especially in the second act, captures the free-spirited sense of release in post-war Paris. A high-energy ensemble show themselves adept in classical ballet, ballroom dancing and jazz.
Anastasia is a musical of two, distinct parts, and that is part of its appeal: we move from the Disney-esque nostalgia of Old Russia to fiery revolution through to Paris in the 20s, shot through with jazz and flapper dancing. It’s Frozen, Les Mis and Ragtime, all in one. Little wonder it’s hard to resist.
MUSIC
TISM
Sydney Opera House, April 10
Reviewed by MICHAEL RUFFLES
★★★½
The trolls aren’t under the bridge, they’re running around the Opera House.
Melbourne electro-pop-rock anarcho-satirists TISM (This is Serious, Mum) continue a comeback either four or 40 years in the making (should you choose to believe they broke up in 1983) with a show that’s somehow both unlikely and inevitable.
Performing all of their breakthrough album, Machiavelli and the Four Seasons, at the Concert Hall three decades after it hit the top 10, manages to mine the same nostalgia vein as other artists pulling the same trick (see Lee, Ben; League, Human; and Day, Green) while also taking the piss.
As classical music is piped in and roadies tidy up the stage at 7.59pm, the thought occurs that it could all be an elaborate joke. This is only reinforced when a choir walks on to sing Philip Glass’s Arse, the album’s pomposity-skewering hidden track.
Hats off for the prank, then it’s giant crescent-shaped moon hats on as the seven anonymous members appear and launch into their highest-charting and possibly most controversial single, the drug-infused celebrity takedown (He’ll Never Be An) Ol’ Man River. They also start launching into the crowd, ripping up costumes and (eventually) breaking a seat.
Co-frontman Ron Hitler-Barassi asks: “What the f— are we doing here?” Giant puppet versions of the band members appear.
A cracking good time? Certainly. Absurd? Absolutely. Actually good tunes? Well, mostly. Machiavelli has moments of genius, but also its skips.
It helps that they mix the order, skating past the more forgettable and dated (Jung Talent Time is amusing now for different reasons). They are at their best when bombastic: How Do I Love Thee? and Greg! The Stop Sign stand out.
Other highlights come from elsewhere: the ironically engaging I’m Interested in Apathy, the yob or wanker Rorschach test Whatareya? and a disturbing yet danceable ditty about Hitler having a bad day are among them.
TISM, along with the likes of The KLF and Chumbawamba, made trolling an art form before the internet became what it is. They’re still going at it: the unrepeatable event is back at the Concert Hall on Sunday, hopefully with the seat fixed. Tisk, tisk, tisk: this is satire, kids.
TISM play the Opera House again on Sunday from 7pm.
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