Reviews

New musicals are always a bit of a gamble. With Banquet of Secrets Victorian Opera is on a winner!

The premise of the show is quite simple. Four friends have been meeting annually for a meal for the past twenty years since leaving school, and one wants each to tell a secret the others don’t know.

Each of these secrets is quite dramatic in its way, so the action constantly moves between lively banter and high drama throughout the evening.

Three generations of Scotland’s Stewart Monarchy are covered in this ambitious trilogy of historical plays – each of which combine cutthroat political intrigue, heated romantic tension and irreverent comic flourishes with thrilling visual spectacle and stirring musical accompaniment. Each instalment can stand alone as a powerful, provocative work, but taken as a whole, The James Plays are an epic for the ages and amongst the finest theatrical achievements of the 21st century thus far.

The King, near the end of his life, summons the biological heir to his throne to the court. Many years before, the young man was kidnapped from his mother, the King’s daughter, after he banished her for marrying a poor woodland man. Eager to be of service, he adapts to the finery that the Kingdom and his soon to be new title will allow him.

The human brain continually seeks to rationalise life events, good and bad, but how does one fathom the unfathomable?  Is it possible for victims of violent atrocity to ever come to terms with what has happened and why?

Written by Scottish playwright David Greig following the horrific 2011 mass slayings in Norway, The Events is co-produced at the Adelaide Festival by the State Theatre Company of South Australia, together with Belvoir and Malthouse Theatre.