Conductor Erina Yashima, making a debut with Opera Australia, followed the singers’ expressive nuance with sensitive focus and established well-defined tempi that allowed chorus and orchestra to negotiate the swirling chaos of the Act II Café Momus scene with tight rhythms and exhilarating energy to which Andrew Moran, Clifford Plumpton, Malcolm Ede and Benjamin Rasheed added vignettes of absurdity.
This tightly staged, superbly sung revival overcame the dangers that can beset the re-staging of popular productions through exacting attention to musical quality and dramatic energy.
THEATRE
THE TALENTED MR. RIPLEY
Roslyn Packer Theatre, August 23
Until September 28
Reviewed by JOHN SHAND
★★★★
Having penned her acclaimed play Switzerland about novelist Patricia Highsmith, Joanna Murray-Smith has now waved her wand across Highsmith’s most famous book, and made it a cracking play. An expert at fizzing dialogue and character exploration, here Murray-Smith has to sustain Highsmith’s premium on plotting, surprise and suspense.
There’s common ground, however, in excavating the psyche of Tom Ripley, who, in Sarah Goodes’ world premiere production, is consummately and energetically played by Will McDonald. It’s a whirlwind role: narrator, minor Manhattan conman, ingratiating sycophant, dreamer, thief, closet homosexual, desperate melancholic and murderer.
McDonald’s Ripley sometimes addresses us as his confidants or as himself in a mirror. He speaks to us slyly, wryly, mendaciously and occasionally wittily, so the effect is not unlike Richard III confiding in us before his next atrocity. But here no crown is at stake; just a life with a future, via eliminating his newfound friend, the uber-rich Dickie Greenleaf (Raj Labade), and assuming his character (and chequebook).
McDonald excels at each step, first being a cunning wastrel approached by Dickie’s father (the ever-reliable Andrew McFarlane) to entice Dickie to return to the family boat-building business from an indefinite Italian holiday. We see him painfully self-conscious in the company of Dickie and his girlfriend Marge (Claude Scott-Mitchell), then the dawning of his scheme, the frightening execution of it, and, triumph of triumphs, his metamorphosis into Dickie.
Designer Elizabeth Gadsby instantly creates a 1950s Italian beach scene with gelato-flavoured beach umbrellas.Credit: Prudence Upton
Goodes has directed the play with singular imagination, especially in the decisions made with set designer Elizabeth Gadsby, so that a 1950s Italian beach scene, for instance, is instantly created with gelato-flavoured beach umbrellas. Crew become extras as required, and trips are depicted by a fragment of train carriage spinning on the spot. Elegant little internal scene-setting tableaux materialise at the extremities of this theatre’s sizable stage, while external scenes are more expansive.
The murder of Dickie in the boat and disposal of his body in the sea are realised with such potent theatrical magic as will haunt your memory for some time.
Labade is an aptly charismatic Dickie. He has a rakishness, hipness and flame-like attraction for the relatively drab, moth-like people who encircle him. Faisal Hamza is a likeable Freddie, in a performance carrying echoes of the loud bonhomie of Philip Seymour Hoffman’s characterisation in Anthony Minghella’s movie, and Johnny Nasser gives a film-noirish portrayal of Inspector Rolverini, tasked with untangling assorted murders and disappearances among these American tourists.
The problem is Marge. Where everyone else is not just credible but compelling, Scott-Mitchell, with the notable exception of the final scene, creates a much slighter characterisation, not helped by costume designer Emma White (who does a sterling job with the men) oddly saddling Marge with overt bad taste.
But burning through the play is the way Murray-Smith, Goodes and McDonald establish Ripley’s fragile sense of self – “a blank slate of a face”, he calls it – and then transform it.
THEATRE
BIRDSONG OF TOMORROW
Old Fitz Theatre, August 24
Until September 6
Reviewed by JOHN SHAND
★★★½
Is it a bird? Is it a play? Is it a play about birds? No, Birdsong of Tomorrow is not really a play, however much you squint through your binoculars. But it does spread its wings in a theatre and have theatrical plumage, so let’s not become too entangled in definitions. Let’s just celebrate Nathan Harrison’s absorbing writing and delivery.
The show is reminiscent of David Attenborough’s timeless The Life of Birds TV series. While Harrison may not be a celebrated naturalist, he is an ardent bird-watcher who also happens to be a theatre-maker, and he’s found a way to combine the two.
It’s an hour-long monologue interweaving myriad information about birds – did you know they are dinosaurs, or that, while the world was young, birds first sang in Australia? – with snippets of his own life. All this he delivers with such artless charm, easy enthusiasm and gentle irony that you sit under a spell such as Ariel might cast, and fall ever more in love with his subject.
I didn’t know crows can bear a grudge against a human for a decade, or that they hold funerals for their own dead. I didn’t know that when lyrebirds were introduced to Tasmania, they brought with them the ability to mimic kookaburras (who aren’t native to the island), and then passed this down from generation to generation. Nor did I know that albatrosses can spend a year at sea without ever setting foot on land, and yet every two years return to the same spot to mate with a lifelong partner – just like some sailors!
Meanwhile, we learn that in a past life Harrison was in a punk band from which he fired his best friend, who later died, and, as a chick clings to the nest before flying for the first time, he’s scared to let go of his grief. It’s his only connection to his dead friend.
Theatrically, the show, directed by Emma McManus for Griffin Theatre (under its Griffin Lookout program, championing new practitioners) is appealingly lo-fi and analogue, other than for wafts of live music crafted by guitarist Tom Hogan. Images are displayed via slides and an overhead projector, and recordings of birdsong come via gramophone, reel-to-reel player or cassette player.
Maintaining this aesthetic, Harrison has opted for drawings and paintings rather than photographs of the birds he discusses. But when he talks about the extraordinary (now nearly extinct) New Zealand kakapo, for instance, the painting is rather ordinary, and the odd captivating photo would have been no great sin.
Woven ever so lightly through the monologue is the merest feather of philosophy: about time, change and permanence, and, without rubbing our beaks in it, a future in which the number of species dwindles by the day. Tomorrow I might be gazing at the sky and trees when I should be writing.
MUSIC
Keith Urban
Qudos Bank Arena, August 22
Reviewed by MILLIE MUROI
★★★★
Guitar-playing singers are a dime a dozen, however, for Keith Urban his weapon of choice is like a seamless extension of his body.
Urban’s touch is playful and technically masterful, coaxing from his instrument strange and unexpected sounds that should make you wince, yet are somehow delightful.
Urban sets the tone with his dexterity on the fretboard during lead single Straight Line from his most recent album High (2024). Older hits such as Where the Blacktop Ends (1999) from his eponymous debut album, and friskier single Long Hot Summer from Get Closer (2010) are likewise interspersed with impressive electric guitar work.
Keith Urban’s touch on guitar is playful and technically masterful. Credit:
Urban is also happy to share the spotlight. His fiddler shines during up-tempo chart topper You Look Good in My Shirt from his 2002 album Golden Road. And a piano solo during Somewhere in My Car is similarly impressive.
Urban also switches things up with covers of Men At Work’s Down Under and I Had Some Help by Post Malone.
Early in the show, Urban promises that “none of you will think about your life outside this arena” during the show.
That was always going to be a big ask. While Urban delivers an intimate and mesmerising performance, there are lulls, especially in the first half of the show, and unnecessary time spent pointing and corralling cheers from the crowd.
However, his vocals are clear, controlled and smooth across the range from tender twangs to more powerful, sustained notes. And despite minimal production bells and whistles, Urban can grip his audience, nailing poignant acoustic numbers such as Blue Ain’t Your Color from his 2016 album Ripcord, picking up the pace with more upbeat songs including Wasted Time from the same album, and taking a plunge into a cover of Chappel Roan’s pop hit Pink Pony Club.
Introducing Heart Like a Hometown from his newest album, Urban, who started off playing at bars across Brisbane, thanked his mum for letting him leave school at 15.
“Every parent [here] right now is going: ‘Shut the hell up’,” he joked. Several decades on, Urban could not look more at home on stage in his home country.
DANCE
INDance 2025 Week Two
Sydney Dance Company Neilson Studio
Reviewed by CHANTAL NGUYEN
★★
INDance is the Sydney Dance Company’s annual curation of independent dance works. At its best, it is a joyful revelation of hidden diamonds: like 2023’s hilarious Fall! Falter!! Dance!!!! by Ryuichi Fujimura, or last week’s satisfying Week One offering.
But I’m worried INDance is trending towards becoming a sorry affair, perpetuating the stereotype that modern dance is alienating and boring. There was the disappointment of INDance 2022, the self-indulgent abyss and all-time low of INDance 2024 (who could forget that naked headstand), and – I’m sorry to say – last night’s premiere, too.
Progress Report began with Rachel Coulson flipping, skipping, and tripping across increasingly large pieces of styrofoam.Credit: Gregory Lorenzutti
I had high hopes for Progress Report by Alison Currie and Alisdair Macindoe, following Macindoe’s phenomenal premiere last year of the AI-inspired Plagiary.
Progress Report is about the proliferation of plastic in the environment. It showcases the multidisciplinary talent of Rachel Coulson, whose clear voice and articulated feet are both extraordinary. The first part is inventive and engaging, with Coulson flipping, skipping, and tripping across increasingly large pieces of styrofoam, as if in a quirky deadpan version of Play School. Then she appears in plastic clothing, morphing into an academic lecturer, a news reporter, and a marketer from the future.
Sadly, Progress Report descends into a cliché that has sunk many promising performances about environmental degradation: a finale of thrashing limbs, whirling props, dramatic lighting, and loud noise. Each time I’ve seen this cliché, it’s meant to represent the apocalyptic despair of environmental catastrophe. But each time it feels terribly superficial and adolescent. Surely, we can express the intensity of environmental grief and fear more deeply than this?
Jo Lloyd’s FM Air came next, accompanied by Duane Morrison’s pleasantly hypnotic soundtrack. It features three sneaker-clad dancers in a giant mesh net. Ceaseless repetition ensues, the dancers shuffling endlessly in their sneakers with their heads covered in fabric. It’s a little like standing on the awkward edges of a rave, or witnessing an unusually serious silent disco.
This choreographic technique is an endurance test and can be mesmerising when executed well, like Anthony Hamilton’s rave-inspired Forever and Ever for SDC. But here, overreliance on improvisation and a lack of clear choreographic themes and variety makes the piece incoherent and painfully monotonous.
I’m beginning to suspect few INDance pieces can engagingly fill the allocated hour. In future, shorter pieces by more choreographers might make the program less risky and more rewarding for curious punters.
Stephen Layton conducts Bach, Mozart and Handel
Sydney Symphony Orchestra, August 21
Reviewed by PETER McCALLUM
★★★½
SSO trumpeter Brent Grapes swept through the opening ritornello of Bach’s celebratory cantata Jauchzet Gott in allen Landen with thrilling agility as though rolling out the red carpet for a deity. It is a never-ceasing wonder how Bach managed to create a sense of joyous expectancy from apparently simple musical materials and masterly harmonic control.
Singing in lightly detached notes of silvery fluency, soprano Sara Macliver entered with the same material a few bars later and the whole movement unfolded as a swirling interchange of sublime energy. In the slower recitative that followed, Macliver demonstrated her ability to wrap lingering tones in her upper register in an aura of glowing resonance.
After a gentler aria with flowing accompaniment from cellist Catherine Hewgill, concertmaster Andrew Haveron and principal second violinist Lerida Delbridge embroidered the chorale melody, sung by Macliver, with gloriously interwoven obligato lines, producing brightly matched tone and a ceaseless flow of buoyant vitality. The cantata closed with a spirited, virtuosic Allelujah from Macliver.
Mozart wrote Exsultate, jubilate, K. 165 when only 16 on what proved to be a remarkably fruitful trip to Italy. It was before the great discovery of Bach that he was to make at the home of Baron van Swieten in the 1780s and he may well not have known Bach’s cantata at this stage. Nevertheless, with the serene vitality of their closing Allelujah movements, the pairing of these two works on this program showcased kindred spirits speaking across time.
Macliver phrased with rounded grace and subdued tone in the lower register and she and conductor Stephen Layton overcame audience distractions to deliver a fluent performance of this precocious masterpiece.
A splendid collection of horns, trumpets, oboes, bassoons and percussion joined for the open-air colours of Handel’s Music for the Royal Fireworks. Layton wore his historical expertise in this music lightly. The brass and woodwind created crisply rhyming dotted rhythms with excellent precision, giving the overture an exciting exuberance.
Layton varied the textures of the closing minuets on each repeat. The broadening of tempo on its final appearance flirted with stagnating pomposity but the music arrived at its final bar in stately magnificence, its composure intact.
