Reviews

There are a few moments in Opera Australia’s triumphant production of My Fair Lady that warrant spontaneous applause. A tableau at the Ascot races, with resplendent blacks and whites; rows and rows of chandeliers flown in for the glorious ballroom scene; and, of course, the most fun number of the show, “Get Me to the Church on Time”, set in a very realistic Covent Gardens markets. Rarely has a musical looked so good on an Australian stage.

Adding to music from Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake a sequence of disparate pieces by Einaudi, Morricone, and Elgar, Melbourne Ballet Company’s director and resident choreographer Simon Hoy has created a surprisingly integrated soundtrack to which he has choreographed a visually charming and often arresting ballet.

There’s so much in The Father that doesn’t seem right. The wall-mounted telephone surely was in the centre of the set a few minutes ago, and now it’s on a stage-left wall. If must have been moved silently during one of intense blackouts that punctuate the production. 

That’s nothing. Soon whole tables disappear, dinner settings, comfortable chairs: the whole room is crumbling, insubstantial. Just like André, the Father himself, played by John Bell.

This strikingly original production of two short plays by Belgian writer Elvis Peeters is by theatre veteran and award winner Richard Murphet.  Elvis Peeters’ texts supply no scene setting and no directions.  The writing is powerful, but the texts are no more than intertwining and juxtaposed monologues.  There is very little interaction between the characters – at least on the page.  It is up to the director what he or she does with this.  What Mr Murphet does is inventive, to say the least; it is also visually and aurally powerful – close to overw