Reviews

A tradition of grand opera over the centuries has been the inclusion of a ballet – inserted into the production with some link to the narrative - as an opportunity for spectacle and reflection. These are often cut or downsized from contemporary performances for economic reasons.

This production - a joint project of Opera Australia, Opera Queensland and Circa - flips this tradition on its head. Such was the quality of the choreography and acrobatics, that it felt like an opera had been inserted into a ballet.

Sammy Butcher is the sole surviving Indigenous musician from the Warumpi Band, which  began in his community of Papunya in NE Arnhem Land and toured enthusiastic communities and then cities here and overseas through the 1980s.  The first to sing in language, the Warumpi Band created anthems which radicalised Australians, black and white, into action on Aboriginal concerns and landrights. The charismatic lead singer, the late George Burarrwanga, was a performer to be reckoned with.  

The show opened to the very enthusiastic audience with the question, “Are you ready to be entertained tonight?” Frenetic athletic energy and a blistering pace held the loosely themed collection of items together and generally delivered an entertaining night of dance and song backed up with interesting staging.

The Master of Ceremonies, vocalist Bek Chapman added live performance and a good dose of audience involvement to the recorded music. Mandy Savickas added solo dance elements.

We all know that Chicago is Bob Fosse’s signature piece, embodying everything he had tried to do on stage for almost twenty years. It opened in 1975, and has played somewhere around the world ever since (49 years!!!) but is it too soon for yet another revival (this time of the 1996 Broadway production, already 18 years old) when it is only four years since we saw the last national production?