Reviews

The Olde Time Music Hall was a popular form of British entertainment of yesteryear, originating around the middle of the 19th century and lasting well into the 20th century. 

It featured many of the popular songs of the day, like “The Pheasant Plucker”, performed by the well-loved entertainers of the period, interspersed with the witty patter from the convivial Master of Ceremonies, Mr Martin Jennings. 

I’d seen this lavish production before, and it still wears well. In Act 1 the church of Sant' Andrea della Valle looked magnificent with layers of gold on the walls, and in the gaol of Act 3 a guard patrolled the upper level as some frightened Jews try to sleep below.

Setting the opera in Nazi Germany worked well. I particularly liked the “shepherd boy” being a young Jewish lad inside the gaol, with an uncertain future. In the second act Scarpia molests an embarrassed female officer in front of the other soldiers.

Daley King, writer of Hold Your Breath (Count to Ten), has issues. Fed up with the inability of theatre to tackle some issues, he is determined to make a theatre piece that deals with his own emotional, mental and physical debilities.

This doesn’t sound like the most uplifting premise for a play, and regular theatre-goers have all seen sagas of the depressed or broken artist before, but Hold Your Breath (Count to Ten) has a wonderfully fresh approach and this World Premiere from Antifragile is thoroughly engaging from start to finish.

In the first few moments of West Australian Opera’s latest production, a collection of gorgeously attired forest animals crawl, slide and bound on to the stage. It is the first sign that The Cunning Little Vixen is not your usual opera.