It’s proof, were proof needed, that this band’s brand of love isn’t pristine or pretty – it lives in the dark, where people sweat, shout and surrender.
MUSIC
MIKELANGELO AND THE BLACK SEA GENTLEMEN
Lennox Theatre, August 3
Reviewed by JOHN SHAND
★★★★
These people, who crawl in here with the moral compass of a slug, are precisely why we must build a wall around Austraya. Have you listened to their lyrics? They’re swindlers, womanisers, gangsters and worse, masquerading as musicians, poets and comedians.
But they are funny, and some of the funniest songs were those they were revisiting from 20 years ago, when Mikelangelo and the Black Sea Gentlemen unleashed Journey Through the Land of Shadows. Suddenly, we were being exposed to eastern European darkness, pessimism and depraved sexual practices.
Of course, we quickly acclimatised.
Mikelangelo and the Black Sea Gentlemen. Credit: Graham Byrnes
If Hell ever did ads of the “why die of boredom with the clouds and harps?” variety, Mikelangelo would be the perfect frontman: equally suave and debauched, with a voice that combines Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash and Il Commendatore from Don Giovanni. Handily, he also writes most of the songs.
Where his Renaissance namesake needed a pope and Sistine Chapel to illuminate his legacy, this Mikelangelo has a band of rogues and thieves called the Black Sea Gentlemen. Rufino, the Catalan Casanova, is just the sort from whom you shield your children: a sleazy violinist who would shy from an honest day’s work as a horse does from fire.
Then there’s Guido Libido, whose piano accordion is a front for vampirical practice and backing vocals. The Great Muldavio is a ruin of a man who not only believes he can play the clarinet, he’s led Mikelangelo and Little Ivan down the same path. Surely there’s a law against three clarinets in one band. It’s especially sad for Little Ivan, who otherwise seems entirely innocent, beyond playing the double bass.
Revisiting their first album is not just an exercise in nostalgia. The original songs – pastiches of Eastern European music – are blessed with the wit, melodies, harmonies and textures to remain wildly entertaining, as they send up these idioms with great affection.
Before One of Those A Minor Days, Mikelangelo deadpans, “This is a song about life’s disappointments. I hope you enjoy it.” The Great Muldavio uses his clarinet as a telescope as they launch into the opening Set Sail, and when Mikelangelo invades the audience, he never creates victims.
The show fell away slightly when the Great Muldavio’s eponymous song lacked the same swaggering commitment to falsehood, and This Broken Dream dared to take itself too seriously. The Wandering Song, meanwhile, began with Little Ivan’s double bass being carried about like a coffin, and Guido Libido delivered El Diablo as if eager to suck our blood. Some who loathe the accordion think all who play it are in the clutches of the Prince of Darkness, anyway.
For The Dead Men Rise, Mikelangelo appeared in tight striped shorts, a brocaded waistcoat and cowboy boots. Nothing more. Even after 20 years, the surprises keep coming.
MUSIC
Little Birdy
Manning Bar, August 2
Reviewed by SHAMIM RAZAVI
★★★½
It’s hard to imagine Little Birdy recording their debut Bigbiglove with an album anniversary show in mind, yet they make the track-by-track recreation format work. Playing their biggest hit, Beautiful to Me, just three songs in could risk anticlimax but instead serves as tension release – what follows is a band blissed out and at ease.
It is hard to imagine Little Birdy doing anything in 2025, in fact. The band vanished without trace 15 years ago, leaving behind a handful of good tunes and warm memories. Mercifully, they skip experimental new material, sticking instead to old favourites.
Katy Steele, Little Birdy’s singer and star, ruminates that It’s All My Fault makes more sense to her now as a harried mother than when she was the teenager who wrote it. That these songs have gained meaning with age is a reflection of the artistry in her youthful songwriting – read those lyrics and she’s not wrong.
Steele remains a gifted performer, and her genuine delight at the reunion of band and audience is infectious. There was almost a bewildered wonder that the band was together again, that an audience still cared, that these songs still mattered.
Though that first album remains their best, the show comes alive in the post-album second half. Less can’t-believe-we’re-here gush, more locked-in rocking rush. Freed from album constraints, they build a coherent, well-crafted climax.
The slow burning Brother works implausibly well as it builds to proper Radio Ga Ga audience clapping, and Come On Come On is every bit as urgent as its title suggests. But the fact that the night’s best number is their cover of Split Enz’s 6 Months in a Leaky Boat says it all: while they make it totally their own, much more vital and muscular than the original, nothing from their own material quite reaches those heights.
That’s not a criticism, but rather a summation: they satisfyingly scratch an itch you didn’t know you had but, as with the best scratches, it is important to know when to stop.
MUSIC
DOPE LEMON
Enmore Theatre, July 31
Reviewed by NADIA RUSSELL
★★★½
As a thrumming psychedelic groove takes its hold over the crowd, a young woman in the audience holds up half of a cut, squished lemon to take a photo of it in front of the band – this is a Dope Lemon concert.
Australian singer-songwriter Angus Stone has been using the moniker for almost a decade. But he has been in the industry for more than twice that time, and it shows. From the moment he takes to the stage to the second he leaves, he is comfortable and at ease in front of the 2000-plus odd people who’ve come out on a cold, rainy Sydney night to Enmore Theatre. More importantly, he’s enjoying himself as he grooves along to the beat, even dancing with a member of the band at one point.
Angus Stone has been playing under the moniker Dope Lemon for about a decade.Credit:
This wasn’t just any show, though, on this leg of the – this was a hometown show, which Stone acknowledged throughout, playing a cover of Midlake’s Roscoe, and making the audience feel that little bit more special.
But for the most part, Dope Lemon leant into a setlist that was solid – albeit including only a few tracks from the new album and missing a few niche hits – with transcendent guitar solos interspersed throughout. It’s a groove that put you under its spell, and when each song ended the trance broke, leaving the audience wanting more.
The band did not break up the songs too much, with plenty of seamless transitions just giving Stone time to change guitars, which he did for nearly every song. They started strong with Stonecutters, before dipping into a slower pace that only ramped back up about halfway through when the audience seemed to have warmed up enough (and perhaps had more to drink) to really vibe with the music.
Many performers have back-up dancers and Dope Lemon featured women with their faces hidden under large animal masks that came on stage for a select few numbers to sway along like it was the 1960s. They started as two and finished as six, also including a stoner and, of course, a lemon. Although harmless, as this was the only presence of women on stage in a performance by an all-male band it left a sour taste.
The band, however, were richly talented and brought great energy to the stage. Both the guitarist and bassist came to the edge of the stage to interact with the crowd while Stone held back, confined by the guitar in his hands and the microphone stand. But that didn’t seem to matter to the audience who were enthusiastically enjoying the music.
Stone would eventually venture to the crowd from his spot on centre stage, with the closing number of the set, Uptown Folks, putting the crowd in raptures. It finished the initial set on such a high that the response to the first encore, Yamasuki’s Yama Yama, was underwhelming until Home Soon brought the energy back up again. It would have been great to have seen more of this energy from Stone earlier in the set, but the more laid-back attitude suits him and his music.
THEATRE
WERKAHOLICS
Belvoir St Theatre, August 1
Until August 17
Reviewed by KATE PRENDERGAST
★★★
The chaotic good of the first half of Vivian Nguyen’s new play werkaholics can be very good. It’s when we meet and kind of begin to adore our leads – two super dramatic young Asian-Australian besties, each doing their (worst) best to #manifest their ideal lives in this, this dream-crushing economy.
Early on, we get to eat up the totally extra comedic performances of Georgia Yenna Oom as Lillian, an extremely pretty (and she knows it) Instagram influencer; and of Shirong Wu as the hilariously moody Jillian, a queer chronically out-of-work actor and grumpy unpaid underling to her self-obsessed, ruthlessly aspirational friend. Wu’s second small role as a fretfully intrusive mum – with clear homage to Fountain Lakes’ Kath – is also a pure treat in a permed wig.
Georgia Yenna Oom (Lillian) and Shirong Wu (Jillian).
Credit:
In many of these early scenes, the audience has great fun. A giddy anticipation ramps up.
Yet what begins under Nicole Pingon’s direction as a vigorously silly examination of cancel culture, the grind, intersectional feminism and authenticity in our “fake it ’til you make it” late capitalist digital era soon loses itself in a muddle of hyperbolic cynicism. If my review were over text message, I’d send a flurry of heart-eyes emojis and then a GIF of the Always Sunny Charlie Conspiracy meme.
Plot, tone and character maniacally veer in a new direction, and all that care we had invested in our relatable pair gets sucker-punched. Pop culture reference-stacked Gen Z humour cedes to jarring dystopian despair, where betrayal is the inevitable order of the day.
It’s a bit of a dismaying progression to the denouement, and our leads seem to feel it too – their previously hyper-animated performances becoming hapless and schlumpy. The sound design also becomes odd and squelchy, the lighting frantic.
I suspect the character of Sage might have something to do with all of this. Sage aka the debt collector aka the mysterious Unmoi, a shadowy internet figure who purges the feed in a vindictive and fanatical mission towards total transparency, and is more monstrous in her sneering (white) righteousness than the desperation-driven frauds she exposes. Ruby Duncan’s portrayal – as a kind of red pill vigilante – routinely clashes with the bubblegum absurdity of Lillian and Jillian, and her billowing evil eventually swallows them up. This is no more evident than in the final scenes, which spring a nihilistic surprise climax.
In front of two huge 16:9 screens showing a cursed agglomeration of browser windows (put together by an inspired Harrison Hall for Ruby Jenkins’ set), Sage will also step outside the story at intervals and pose as a kind of internet prophet and all-powerful adjudicator. In dark glasses, she spits sermons on false idols from a dimly lit stage direct to audience; we’re made to understand she’s the one controlling the narrative.
There’s a truly worthy modern fable glimmering in this work. If the production had been more subtle in its efforts to disturb, werkaholics might have won over a lot of young, jaded, broke-ass hearts.
MUSIC
Javier Perianes performs Saint-Saens
Sydney Symphony Orchestra
Sydney Opera House, July 30
Reviewed by PETER McCALLUM
★★★★½
During the early 20th century, it became the habit of some English writers to dismiss “mere virtuosity” as a symbol of shallowness, vanity and the European (particularly French) moral decline. Yet Camille Saint-Saens, in writing about his Piano Concerto No. 5, stated that he wanted to defend virtuosity for its picturesque capabilities.
In his performance of that concerto with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and German conductor Kevin John Edusei, Spanish pianist Javier Perianes became the perfect advocate for a type of virtuosity that boosts the music’s spirit rather than the performer’s ego. He scattered the first movement with graceful starbursts of brilliance, executed with sophisticated elegance and never a hint of harshness or stridency, while always retaining deep affinity for the music’s tone.
In the exotic second movement, recalling Saint-Saens’ trip through Egypt and Africa as far as Vietnam, Perianes played with the ringing clarity of improvised song against swirling turbulence from the orchestra, moving to a warmer quieter melody that the composer said was a Nubian love song he heard on the Nile.
In the finale, as though enjoying a moment of provocative vulgarity, Saint-Saens imitates the paddle steamer’s churning wheels, and Perianes and the orchestra rode the music’s surging torrent with glittering, perilous excitement.
It would be hard to find a more complete musical opposite to this than the work played in the second half, Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 15 in A major, Opus 141, his last, written four years before his death. Philosopher Theodor Adorno noted that the maturity of late artistic works “is not like the ripeness of fruit” but, rather, they are wrinkled and fissured. Although he was speaking of Beethoven his words have resonance for this austere yet totally absorbing work.
Edusei unfolded its structure with exacting concentration which bound the audience’s attention. A ping from the glockenspiel at the start unleashes a bright flute melody (Emma Sholl) and the first movement is largely engaged in playful rhythmic games. At one point the music introduces a well-known quotation from Rossini’s William Tell overture as though it had come to mind through the musical equivalent of word association.
The SSO and Edusei had played Rossini’s actual overture with animated vivacity at the start of the concert. Although listeners don’t exactly need reminding of how it goes, this gesture saved Rossini from the indignity of appearing only as a cliche in Shostakovich’s sardonic eye.
After premonitory brass chords in the second movement, cellist Catherine Hewgill led the mood to soul-searching expressiveness. This movement eventually rises above its desultory stride to a determined climactic moment, the centre point of the entire work. The third movement relapses to bizarre sarcasm and the fourth moulds the brass sound that opened the second movement into another, less capricious quotation, Wagner’s “fate” motif from Die Walkure.
The music fragments and grows increasingly spare, returning at the close to the symphony’s opening ideas. Even the rhythmic chirpiness is recalled as though the troubled composer had come to look on both pleasure and pain with detachment, if not indifference.
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