THE FACE OF JIZO
Old Fitz Theatre, November 1<\/strong>
Until November 11<\/strong>
Reviewed by JOHN SHAND
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The play transforms itself in a moment, just as the lives of everyone in Hiroshima were either ended or transformed at 8.15am on August 6, 1945. Until this moment, Hisashi Inoue\u2019s gentle drama has a father and daughter discussing all that\u2019s little or large in her life in the city three years after the detonation of the first atomic bomb. This still looms over them, making storms \u2013 with their white flashes and thunderclaps \u2013 a terror.<\/p>\n
She is Mitsue (Mayu Iwasaki), a 23-year-old librarian. Her father, Takezo (Shingo Usami), we gradually come to realise, is not really there. He might be a ghost, or he might live in her mind and heart \u2013 both riddled with guilt because she survived the blast and he didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n
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Mayu Iwasaki plays 23-year-old Mitsue who is riddled with guilt because she survived the blast.<\/span>Credit: <\/span>Phil Erbacher<\/cite><\/p>\n Takezo is as practical, wise, humorous and caring as he was when alive; keen for Mitsue to find the happiness that will render his presence redundant. The fastest path to that felicity \u2013 apart from learning to forgive herself for being one of those to live \u2013 would be if she accepted the advances of a young man who frequents the library, singling Mitsue out with gifts, such as a bean jam bun. Her suitor seeks information about the effects of the bomb, but the occupying army prohibits such material.<\/p>\n The transformation comes when Takezo tells us of the heat the bomb generated, which was twice as hot as the surface of the sun, the fireball instantly erasing or melting everything it hit \u2013 and that was before the shockwave and the radiation.<\/p>\n Inoue, who died in 2010, renders the enormity of the catastrophe in tiny details and personalised impacts. His play, caringly translated by Roger Pulvers, is about the way we negate our humanity in the name of war, and it is also about the nature of storytelling.<\/p>\n Mitsue and Takezo are kind, likable people, played with great warmth by Iwasaki and Usami, with the latter also co-directing the production with David Lynch. You sense the actors, who are still occasionally insecure in their lines, will grow further into the roles, and audiences will feel for and be charmed by their characters all the more.<\/p>\n Japanese theatre has been ignored here, so this was a brilliant choice of play, and further evidence Red Line Productions is Sydney\u2019s most widely questing company.<\/p>\n THEATRE \u201cYou do go on, don\u2019t you!\u201d<\/p>\n This line, delivered with prim fruitiness by stage doyenne Annie Byron \u2013 here as a dazzlingly gowned ghost-mother \u2013 draws the first gust of laughter from the audience. We have just begun the second act of Stephen Sewell\u2019s new play, the Australian\u2019s first on-stage production since 2019.<\/p>\n Noel Hodda and Helen O\u2019Connor in The Lives of Eve.<\/span>Credit: <\/span>Danielle Lyonne<\/cite><\/p>\n The troubled characters in the story do indeed go on, which is perhaps to be expected given the two settings are a psychoanalyst\u2019s office and a home in which a marriage of many years is falling apart. A lot of talking was bound to happen. Gradually we come to understand the play as a study of language and its potential to transform and to obliterate.<\/p>\n Still, particularly in the first half (in which tragically Byron has only one scene), this relentless talking is exhausting. And while the second half is partly redeeming, it feels at times as though Sewell is working through his own ideas of \u201cwhat it means for women to exist in this world\u201d, with much focus on how female orgasm relates to this question, and whether the (presented as binary) genders can get along. Kim Hardwick\u2019s direction keeps much of the play\u2019s intentions veiled.<\/p>\n Hannah Yardley\u2019s set features floor-to-ceiling Persian rugs, while Sewell\u2019s characters are also complex creations running up the walls. Helen O\u2019Connor is our titular psychoanalyst, played with a spiky strangeness that goes from unnerving stoicism to yelling at patient Sylvia that she \u201ccan\u2019t orgasm because she doesn\u2019t want to give men the satisfaction.\u201d<\/p>\n Sylvia happens to be the other side of the same coin, played with promise by newcomer Louisa Panucci. Noel Hodda is Sylvia\u2019s husband, endearing yet doomed by his conventional ideas of love. Free of worldly concerns, Sylvia\u2019s dead mother is the most sanguine.<\/p>\n At two hours plus, The Lives of Eve<\/i> wants too urgently to get to the thick of its ideas. You\u2019re hardly introduced to the characters before they begin dissecting themselves and tearing each other apart. It gives you a lot to parse – much feminist and penis-centric psychoanalytic theory – and the result is a wary puzzlement as to where exactly it lands.<\/p>\n DANCE<\/strong> That theme is reflected in the venue – it\u2019s the first SDC work to be performed in the company\u2019s home studio in Walsh Bay, where audiences are seated in the round less than three metres from the dancers.<\/p>\n The piece is also about artistic director Rafael Bonachela\u2019s Spanish roots. For the score, Bonachela collected songs by his favourite Hispanic chanteuses, representing the \u201csounds of [his] childhood\u201d. Parts of Somos were choreographed during a residency in Madrid, immersing the dancers in Spanish life and allowing sound designer Nick Wales to roam the streets, recording the hum of Spanish crowds for use in the score.<\/p>\n The choreography has Rafael Bonachela\u2019s trademark athletic complexity.<\/span>Credit: <\/span>Pedro Greig<\/cite><\/p>\n To top it all off, the usual SDC studio cafe has been transformed into a cosy tapas bar, complete with guitarist and lemon trees.<\/p>\n Somos<\/em> is visually striking, beginning with the dancers behind a gauzy shredded curtain (Kelsey Lee\u2019s It\u2019s all up close and personal, every sinew and muscle in view under Damien Cooper\u2019s masterfully intimate, hazy lighting. Combined with the crooning music and Lee\u2019s cabaret noir costuming, you can practically smell the cigarette smoke and nightclub booze.<\/p>\n The intimate venue also showcases a different side to Bonachela\u2019s choreography. With no space for For all its talk of true intimacy, Somos<\/em> dips into depersonalising sexual objectification. Watching the The sexuality is emphasised by Lee\u2019s costuming: all BDSM rips, lace, and leather. A gripping heartfelt solo by Jesse Scales and emotionally complex duets by Riley Fitzgerald and Dean Elliott bring relief, reminding us that genuine intimacy transcends a perfect sexualised body and reflects the whole person\u2019s thoughts, feelings, and lived experience.<\/p>\n But despite these aspects, Somos<\/em> remains an impressive work and \u2013 clocking in at under an hour \u2013 a good introduction to dance.<\/p>\n MUSIC<\/strong> Alexander Gavrylyuk played fast and loud in Tchaikovsky\u2019s Piano Concerto No. 1 in B flat minor<\/em>, hammering the majestic opening chords and dominating the first movement without a hint of reticence. In the quieter orchestral episode that introduced the slow movement, flautist Emma Sholl introduced a note of simplicity against delicately plucked strings before Gavrylyuk took up the same theme, moulding it with expressive angst boldly worn on his sleeve.<\/p>\n In the last movement, he rattled out the main theme, with its characteristic offbeat accent, double notes and slick ornamental twirl with brittle crispness. Just before the climactic return of the more romantic second theme, Gavrylyuk produced a thunderous roulade of octaves with jackhammer force. It was a caricature performance of forceful virtuosity, made for the cameras dotted around the hall, and the audience leapt to their feet and cheered.<\/p>\n By contrast, one solitary audience member ostentatiously booed M\u00e9taboles<\/em> by Henri Dutilleux which started the concert, an undeservedly churlish response, in my view, to a performance conductor Donald Runnicles and the Sydney Symphony had crafted with exquisite care and refined subtlety.<\/p>\n Me\u0301taboles<\/em> is a set of five carefully etched sections, each taking a theme, mutating it and passing on the changed version to the next. This process has its own fascination somewhat like watching the variations that occur in nature between well-formed and less well-formed samples of the same plant. Yet what gives the work its expressive shape and coherence is the distinctive orchestral colour Dutilleux finds for each section.<\/p>\n There is sharply cornered, ritualistic character to the wind playing in the first part, and warm sound of consolation from the strings in the second. The third has disorienting jabs from brass, leading to ethereal hushed percussion in the fourth, punctuated by eerie chords on double bass harmonics evoking other-worldly illumination. The final section completes the cycle and restores the opening theme.<\/p>\n
THE LIVES OF EVE <\/strong>
KXT on Broadway, November 1<\/strong>
Until November 11<\/strong>
Reviewed by KATE PRENDERGAST<\/strong>
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Up Close: Somos<\/strong>
Sydney Dance Company, Neilson Studio<\/strong>
November 1<\/strong>
Until November 18<\/strong>
Reviewed by CHANTAL NGUYEN<\/strong>
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Sydney Dance Company bills its latest work, Up Close: Somos<\/em>, as being all about intimacy.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
set design), which rises slowly to reveal them dancing sensuous duets and ensembles on a small
mirror stage.<\/p>\n
his usual high-speed leaps and dizzying turns, Bonachela opts for an earthier, more grounded sensuousness. The choreography still has his trademark athletic complexity though, with the dancers interlocking limbs like living Tetris puzzles, sliding themselves into remarkable lifts and dives.<\/p>\n
dancers through the gauze curtain makes you feel like a voyeur peering into a dressing room. Most of the dance scenes have the same moody eroticism that, while initially compelling, feels one dimensional after a few numbers.<\/p>\n
Alexander Gavrylyuk performs Tchaikovsky<\/strong>
Sydney Symphony Orchestra<\/strong>
Opera House Concert Hall, November 1<\/strong>
Reviewed by PETER MCCALLUM<\/strong>
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