Reviews

Britten wrote this opera following the success of his famous Peter Grimes opus, wanting to create a work in direct contrast and with a comical flavour. He chose well because the plot is an entertainment in itself and is a fitting playground for a variety of interesting characters. With an inventive, contemporary score written at the height of his powers it provides a demanding and yet commanding platform for opera students and staff to tackle while in itself being respected by academics and those who work in the industry.

Slip into your seats in Sydney Opera House’s Dame Joan Sutherland Theatre, as producers John Frost and Opera Australia throw the switch on their theatrical time capsule, transporting us to 1956, the height of Broadway’s Golden Age of Musical Theatre.

My Fair Lady’s overture, encapsulating Frederick Loewe’s timeless score, is delivered in all its glory by a lavish 32 piece orchestra, the likes of which you haven’t heard from a musical theatre pit in years, lifting spirits from its opening strains.

The literary output of the three Brontë sisters paints a varied picture of the inescapable confines of genteel rural poverty.  The authors well knew such poverty and its limitations on opportunity, and well knew too that marriage was the key to escaping it permanently, and that imagination was the key to doing so daily.  Mel Dodge’s script, featuring Charlotte Brontë’s words from letters and conversation, has Charlotte speak of their lives in detail, and particularly of their writing habits and of Charlotte’s abiding but doomed love.

A jewel of a two-hander, Blackbird by Scotland’s David Harrower made its mark around the world after its debut at the Edinburgh Festival in 2005.  It’s a revelatory showdown between Una and Ray.  She has tracked him down fifteen years after their brief relationship, back when he was 40 and she just 12 years old.