Reviews

Multi-award-winning world musicians Mzaza packed the Powerhouse Theatre for a live rendition of their acclaimed album The Birth and Death of Stars. Enthusiastic music lovers enjoyed the passion, intelligence and musicality of the sextet, performed against a surreal digital set by Finnish animator Laura Matikainen.

Concertmaster Warwick Adeney quipped in his opening introduction that ‘Mozart was like bacon, it goes with everything,’ and then the orchestra proceeded to give us a smorgasboard of favourite pieces that made up a gourmet meal – an appetizer of Mozart, followed by an entrée of Beethoven and Tchaikovsky, before a main course of Gershwin, and a dessert of Dvorak and Ravel. It was indeed a rich degustation.

The program was the result of an audience survey as to what were QSO audiences’ favourite pieces, and what they would like the orchestra to play.

An empty space suddenly fills with people – all coming in from a cold world outside. It could be a post-apocalyptic setting. Someone finds a book – an artefact fit for a concrete time capsule – evidence of human lives. It is Jimi Bani as the Stage Manager. He tells us the book is a copy of Our Town by Thornton Wilder, and soon he encourages his colleagues to take on the characters and present the play. The only sets are provided by your own imagination, as he describes the town, its streets and its people.

‘If someone thinks that love and peace is a cliché that must have been left behind in the Sixties, that's their problem. Love and peace are eternal.’ John Lennon. Never a truer word was said. I spent my latter years of primary school and early years of high school living in the 60s and so Davine’s latest show Summer of ’69 was a must to see!

Davine Productions, headed by the visionary David Gauci, is well known for smaller cast musical theatre done superbly and this show is no exception.