Reviews

Since its premiere by the Melbourne Theatre Company in June 2015, this stage adaptation of Alfred Hitchcock’s classic sixties chase-movie has successfully played around the world in Canada and the UK. An obvious crowd-pleaser, Carolyn Burns’ treatment sticks very close to Ernest Lehman’s screenplay (perhaps a little too close) in putting this mistaken identity spy escapade on stage.

This is as sophisticated a performance of this musical as you could ever hope to see at close quarters.

The standards were so high that it felt like you were watching Opera Australia rather than an Independent Theatre production.

Aspects of Love is already opera-like in the sense that it is sung through. The generous sized cast of sixteen and orchestra of ten squeezed onto the Hayes Theatre stage added to the feeling of abundance.

The musical is Andrew Lloyd Webber at his most florid.

Not subtle, this play starts with a couple in congress, the woman wresting dominance from her partner while renegotiating the language of sex. Later another woman presents her sexual availability and naked body as a consumable alongside grocery items, the shop staff more horrified by her lack of attractiveness than her nakedness.

In 2016, the QSO ran an audacious campaign declaring ‘She’s Ours!’ – to celebrate their coup in snaffling the captivating and world-renowned Alondra de la Parra as their Conductor and Music Director. Now I can see what all the fuss was about! De la Parra’s passion for music is infectious. In her role as Music Director, she starts Mahler’s 3rd Symphony with a short explanation of each of the six movements. She doesn’t believe in the usual classical music boundaries – urging us not to hold back.