Adelaide Festival is in full swing. They have just announced that Matthew Lutton will be taking over as Artistic Director from next year. Lutton was for the last nine years Artistic Director and co-CEO of the Malthouse Theatre in Melbourne. He also has impressive opera directing credits which include: Make No Noise for the Bavarian State Opera, Strauss’ Elektra for Opera Australia and West Australian Opera, and Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman for New Zealand Opera. In 2022 he directed Kurt Weill’s Happy End for Victorian Opera.
Brett Sheehy has done himself proud with his come-out-of-retirement program and only cemented his long association with Adelaide as we discussed with him last year in Irresistible Magazine.
Here’s a round-up of what Irresistible Magazine has seen so far.
FEELING AFRAID AS IF SOMETHING TERRIBLE IS GOING TO HAPPEN 3.5/5
Space Theatre, Adelaide Festival Centre, Festival Drive
Starring Samuel Barnett / Written by Marcelo Dos Santos / Directed by Matthew Xia
As any comedian knows, you never let the truth get in the way of a good story. Dos Santos has written a tight hour of narrative stand- up, about a stand-up, and Barnett’s nervy acting is absolutely convincing as the figure of the tragic comic who struggles to get real life right. He cleverly continually reveals himself to be an unreliable narrator, immediately undoing his own stories, a real life mirror of the storyteller searching for best plot line, and then letting the audience in on his darkest secrets. He does the same eventually with the focus of the story, the new American love in the narrators life, as he also tries to break the habit of hanging around on dating apps, and all the complications that go with them. Considering the edginess and neediness of the protagonist, its wrapped up a little nicely, a bit more grit at the end would have been welcome.
ENSEMBLE LUMEN: TOWARDS THE LIGHT Daylight Express 5/5
Elder Hall, The University of Adelaide
Anna Goldsworthy, Edith Salzmann, Elizabeth Layton, Emma Gregan, Lloyd Van’t Hoff, Lucinda Collins and Stephen King played in the Elder Hall beautifully individually, in various configurations, and altogether. An absolute lunchtime treat, and a fabulous grouping, of which this performance was an Australian exclusive. Emma Gregan was delightful on a horn which she played expertly at on point by herself in the style of a Japanese instrument, and Lloyd Van’t Hoff was a complete standout on the clarinet.
CAÍDA DEL CIELO (Fallen from Heaven) 5/5
Her Majesty’s Theatre 58 Grote St, Adelaide
Rocío Molina
Irresistible suspects that this is going to be the best thing we see in Adelaide. An absolute knock-out. See the complete review here.
KRAPP’S LAST TAPE 3.5/5
Dunstan Playhouse, Adelaide Festival Centre, Festival Drive
Starring Stephen Rea / By Samuel Beckett / Directed by Vicky Featherstone / Landmark Productions
The play, one of Becketts major works, is often considered his most personal. An older Krapp listens back to recordings he made earlier in his life, and he doesn’t have a lot of good to say about his younger self. Over the course of the hour we watch him reconcile his past and his present, and live with the level of regret and nostalgia and understanding that he is comfortable with. Those who are fascinated by Beckett, and want to learn something more after the usual Waiting for Godot experience would do well to catch this performance, if not only to see Stephen Rea, although he is hardly stretched. If Beckett isn’t quite your bag, it’s a hard entry point, and not as funny as other short Beckett plays such as Not I. The director Vicky Featherstone is a master, so to see a work from both her and Rea is a treat, but plan to have a martini afterwards.
INNOCENCE 4.5/5
Festival Theatre, Adelaide Festival Centre
By Kaija Saariaho / Original Finnish Libretto by Sofi Oksanen & Multilingual Libretto by Aleksi Barrière / Conducted by Clément Mao-Takacs / Directed by Simon Stone
Adelaide Festival always has at the centre of the program a big opera ticket, and this year is no exception with Innocence. This Australian Premiere follows sell-out seasons at Festival d’Aix-en-Provence, Finnish National Opera, London’s Royal Opera House, Dutch National Opera and San Francisco Opera, and directly before its New York debut at the Metropolitan Opera.
The opera is a revolutionary examination of the long arcs in all directions of tragedies, the kind that shape families for generations to come, and change towns and countries for as long as they are remembered. We start off in a wedding, and end up with blood smeared walls and heart shattering revelations. We are confronted with the questions at the centre of the performance; who can claim innocence, does anyone ever truly act alone, what kind of responsibility should families and societies take from the acts of their members, and who is allowed too be forgiven and move on.
The composer Kaija Saariaho passed away in 2023, making this her final opera. She was from Finland and lived in Paris, and the opera is sung in Finnish, English, French, Spanish and German, reflecting not just the composers life, and the fact that the story is set in an international school, but the cross-national reach of these issues, and that no student or community is immune. Claire de Sévigné is a standout as the mother-in-law who can’t process her bad luck, or her hand in the proceedings. Her soprano and the other singers handle perfectly the complexities of the often discordant but simultaneously enveloping score.
The set is an amazing and unforgettable revolving structure that transforms seamlessly as the rooms turn, evolving between kitchens and restaurants and classrooms and homes, giving more movement to the performers as their grief ricochets off the walls. A host of backstage crew make that possible, as evidenced by the large number who came out to take a bow.
It’s not for the faint-hearted and you won’t leave on a Puccini romantic high, but it’s brilliant and urgent and smacks opera right into the middle of the contemporary scene, and the heart of politically dramatic art.
