Reviews

An expectant hush fell over the packed crowd as the audience prepared for the long and eagerly awaited return of Opera Australia to the State Theatre in Melbourne. As the lambent, longing, opening notes of the overture rippled out from the pit, it was clear we were to be rewarded for our long patience with a night of magnificent music, with Orchestra Victoria in fine form under the assured guidance of Tahu Matheson.

Conductor Guy Noble quipped that it’s not often we get to experience the wonder of musical theatre with a symphony orchestra, and how wonderful the feeling was when we do. That’s what happened at yesterday’s QSO concert at QPAC. It was an afternoon to sit back and luxuriate in the sound with superb voices singing a collection of musical theatre’s greatest power-ballads.

Tugun’s latest offering is The Kidnap Game, a drama about a rather brazen, would-be ransom seeking young man’s attempt to be with his underage girlfriend. 

Set in the office of a highly successful international CEO Paul Kendron (Graham Scott), the play opens as he receives the devastating phone call to inform him of the disappearance of his teenage daughter while on her way to school. The extremely confident caller (Luke Jones) demands a ransom for the girl’s return.

British writer E.M.Forster travelled extensively in India between 1912 and 1913, and returned there for a short time as a public servant in 1921. His novel A Passage to India, based on the political, social and spiritual divisions he observed during his visits, was first published in 1924. Set in a fictitious Indian city called Chandrapore, it was originally adapted as a play in 1960 by Santha Rama Rau.