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Shane Cotton. New Paintings and new directions

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

Shane Cotton, Super Radiance

Shane Cotton

New Paintings

Gow Langsford, Onehunga

Until November 16

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

Shane Cotton has progressively mined the history and myth of Māori along with its intersection with European colonisation, featuring images which recall stories, along with references to historical and mythical figures and locations.

With his latest exhibition of “New Paintings” the artist  could be seen as entering his  Fauvist period with many of the paintings having the features of the Fauves. Those painters of the early part of the twentieth century employed simplified shapes along with intense and juxtaposed colours.

The “He Waka Karaka” ($9000) featuring a small  Pacific craft with a sail exemplifies this aspect with intense blues, purples and green while the large, colourful “Super Radiance” ($90,000) is an example of one of the new directions of Cottons painting – more traditional landscape painting. Even though his previous works have featured landscape forms these were generally refined and abstracted.

There are several works of Cotton’s Toi Moko works where the  tattooed and preserved ‘shrunken’ Māori heads reference conflict, trade, and repatriations. In works such as “The Great Attractors” ($55,000) the tattoo lines tracing out genealogy are linked to the notion of neural connections, knowledge links and computer networks.

Shane Cotton, The Great Attractors

Apart from the shrunken heads Cotton has rarely included figures in his work but in this show, there are several which connect with his living in Northland and revisiting some of his earlier work and the notions of colonialism and cultural exchange.

Shane Cotton, The Walker

In “The Walker” ($8500) he has replicated the self portrait of the early explorer/artist Augustus Earle taken from Earle ‘s painting “Distant view of the Bay of Island”. Cotton has also appropriated another figure from the work , A Māori with a taiaha who is leading Earle . This figure is also present in “Super Radiance”, “Sunset Gate” ($48,000) and “He tangata hikoi” ($8500) acting as a guide through the landscapes of the North.

Augustus Earle, Distant view of the Bay of Island

Cotton has also used an image of missionary and publisher of Māori works Thomas Kendall taken from the painting “Hongi Hika and Waikato” with Thomas Kendall in England in 1820” by James Barry.

James Barry, Hongi Hika and Waikato” with Thomas Kendall in England in 1820

This image is used in the small portrait “Internal Visions” ($8750) and “The Visitation” ($8500) where Cotton has depicted him contemplating a colourful, modernist manaia form where in the original painting he is looking at Hongi Hika and Waikato.

Shane Cotton, The Visitation

There are also a few of the artists flower painting such as “Insert” ($12,500) which have developed over the years for his early  plant paintings.

There are a number of the artist’s three panel works most of which feature a manaia figure flanked by delicate foliage while others have landscape/vegetation  panels or in the case of ”Ahuaiti’s Cave” ($130,000) images of the sea. This work refers to the Ahuaiti who was rejected by her husband, forcing her to live in a cave on the Northland coast with her son Uenuku Kuare who is depicted at the base of the painting as a tiny figure, the same image as Earle’s guide  in “Distant view of the Bay of Island”.

Shane Cotton, Ahuaiti’s Cave

This linking of mythic figure to historical figure to an  invented guide inhabiting some the paintings is an example of Cottons ability to transition across myth, history, time and location.

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Peter Pan: Loads of Command but little Control

Review by Malcolm Calder

Jennifer Ludlum as Captain Hook Photo Andi Crown

Peter Pan

By Carl Bland

Adapted from the story by J M Barrie

An Auckland Theatre Company and Nightsong production

Directors, Ben Crowder and Carl Bland

Set, John Verryt

Lighting Sean Lynch

Costumes Elizabeth Whiting

Composer and Music Claire Cowan

Sound Max Scott

Choreography Dayna Pomare Pai

With Andrew Grainger, Jungwhi Jo, Tupe Lualua, Jennifer Ludlam, Anika Moa, Nova Moala-Knox, Lotima Nicholas Pome’e, Theo Shakes, Angus Stevens, Tess Sullivan, the Nightsong Youth Company and Roux the dog.

ASB Waterfront Theatre

Until 27 October

Review by Malcolm Calder

Whether as Captain Hook or the understated Mr Darling, Jennifer Ludlum commands the eyes, the ears and the senses every time she takes to the stage in this rather unique production.  Striding around guiding, leading and even cueing other actors, she is totally in command.  Her pedigree and experience is clear in her every nuanced action and clearly demonstrates why she is one of this country’s finest character actors. 

However it seems she is not supported by any kind of control structure at all in this Peter Pan and that is a great pity.

Nightsong has developed a fine reputation over the years and its I Want To Be Happy remains one of my 2023 standouts.  But this collaboration under the Auckland Theatre Company umbrella has confused me.  It would be easy to dismiss it as a rather ginormous mishmash with no one in control.  That is possibly true to a degree but there are clues as to what it is trying to do.

Writer Carl Bland pays homage to Barrie’s 1920s original.  This is not a hi-tech show and he has kept it old-fashioned in many ways.  However his work as a director is where things go a little awry – a good reason why writers who direct their own work sometimes incline towards the over-indulgent.  Bland has tinkered with Barrie’s original and thrown in many asides, one-liners and loads of whimsy.  Many of them work while others are wasted and become mere throwaways.

It is a bit like all those things got put in a bucket and then someone threw them at the stage.  As a result things just sort of ‘happen’ in this Peter Pan rather than become magically ‘revealed’ after characters evolve, situations develop their own dynamic energy and tension has been drawn tighter and tighter.

Perhaps these things may have evolved after another week or two of rehearsal, but inter-character dynamics were all but absent and few did little more than appear onstage and utter their lines.

Some did their best. Theo Shakes developed a certain presence as Pan, especially in Act 2, Lotima Nicholas Pome’e sang with beauty towards the end of Act 1 and Andrew Grainger blustered about a lot.

Perhaps the whole thing could be summed up by the inclusion of Anika Moa.  Apart from providing some, admittedly nuanced, contributions to the accompanying soundscape I have no idea why she was included.  Her Mermaid Queen simply occupied a space, may have added an occasional vocal harmony and tickled a few percussion instruments.  Poor Anika wound up a distracting sideshow. I felt sorry for her.

John Verryt’s set looked like it might possibly have been relocated from Barrie’s era, a beautifully-crafted wolf suit seemed to cover Tess Sullivan’s mic so we could barely hear her words, low-tech flying is a bit yawn-inducing these days and the whole thing looked under-rehearsed –at a production level too.  Even the intelligently-included ATC Youth Company, making up numbers as pirates and Lost Boys, occasionally looked a little lost themselves.

Through all of this the missing element was command.  One could almost sense Ludlum willing others in the cast to react, respond and become personalities matching the energy, effort and detail she put into her work  – but this production allowed them to do so only rarely.  As her Captain Hook met his demise I’ll swear I could hear her sigh of relief as the crocodile finally clamped its jaws around her and carted her off to who knows where.

And, while conceding that Barrie’s original has a dark side and may provide a few giggles for children I’m inclined to believe its moral about transitioning from childhood is somehow lost in translation for children anyway.  On leaving the theatre I overheard a 10-year-old son respond to his father’s question about what he thought of the show.  His response ‘too long but I liked the dog’ was his summation.

So, thank you ATC for your policy of diversifying your product range in 2023.  However this Peter Pan raises other questions too.  Not least its timing – one wonders why a show specifically targeting children and families should open at the very end of the school holidays.  There have been many successes this year and I am sure this little blip does not negate the others.

But, finally, congratulations to Jennifer Ludlum for two finely-crafted characters.  They commanded the stage.

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Ray Ching: the huia & our tears

reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

Ray Ching

the huia & our tears

ARTIS Gallery

RRP $80.00

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

With his latest book “the huia & our tears” Ray Ching has shown once again that he is not just a great painter, he is also a clever storyteller and an expert ornithologist.

The large format book like all his previous publications is impressive with full colour reproduction, Illustrations spread over two pages, great typography and well researched text. It adds greatly to our understanding and appreciation of the huia which disappeared in the early years of the twentieth century.

The book is a remarkable collection of memories, observations, research and reflections on the huia and its place in New Zealand ornithological and national history.

Ching has had an interest bordering on obsession with the huia from an early age noting that he had always had the bird with him, connected by its image on the old New Zealand sixpence.

Included in the book are the artist’s encounters with taxidermists, ornithologists, writers artists and major figures in New Zealand’s history who provide fascinating insights into the history of the huia.

The Kite and the huia (detail)

In many of his previous books notably his Aesop’s Kiwi Fables  he has included moral tales featuring figures from the animal kingdom. In this  book he has included several examples of these including  “The huia and our tears as well as “The kite and the huia”

He includes early reports of the huia by Charles Heaphy, Edward Jerningham Wakefield and Ernest Dieffenbach as well as Walter Buller’s description of the huia where he wrote:

“The Huia never leaves the shade of the forest. It moves along the ground, or from tree to tree, with surprising celerity by a series of bounds or jumps. In its flight it never rises, like other birds, above the tree tops”.

There are a number of other mentions about the bird such as the poem “The Huia” included in Eileen Duggan’ s 1929 publication “New Zealand Bird Songs”  The final verse of this poem reads:

Where is it now that once was high?

Where is it now, where is its wing?

Where is the Prince of the leaves and sky?

Where is the King?

Ching notes that many of the illustrations of the huia are from examples held in museums but only few from recently killed birds which accounts for the lack of dramatic colouring as the plumage has faded.

Ray Ching, Huia (detail)

In this respect he notes that the work of Keulemans who produced the illustrations for Walter Bullers books on New Zealand birds may be the most accurate as he normally received his birds sent by Buller to Europe within a few weeks of their death.

There is a series of portraits of  Māori by Lindauer and Goldie in which the sitters have worn huia feathers in their hair with Ching referencing the use of the bird’s feathers by high-ranking Māori. Included in these portraits are images Pane Watene (Ngati Maru) and Tawhiao Matutaera Te Wherewhere (Ngāti Mahuta).

Gottfried Lindauer, Pane Watene (Ngati Maru)

As well as Chings account of his sixty-year interest in the huia he includes another important text.

The now out of print publication “The Book of the Huia” written by W.J. Phillipps and published in 1963 is reproduced in full providing additional information . In it the author included conversations and correspondence of early settlers and the place of the huia in the lives of Māori.

He also provides details of the bird’s life from birth through its use as a food and its feathers for decoration both for Māori and later Europeans and its wholesale slaughter in the late nineteenth century and inclusion in museums across the globe.

Ching also includes  details of all the huia held in the many New Zealand locations as well as the UK, America Germany

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The Apprentice: Trump’s early days of learning the art of corruption

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

Jeremy Strong (Roy Cohn) and Sebastian Stan (Donald Trump)

THE APPRENTICE

Directed by: Ali Abbasi

Duration: 120min

In cinemas from October 10th

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

Some of the more interesting aspects of the Donald Trump biopic, “The Apprentice” are around its funding and distribution. Unlike most US films it was largely financed by Irish and Danish organisations and none of the major distributors would touch the film, fearing the wrath of the ex-president. To fund the distribution of the film in the US the producers initially had to launch a Kickstarter fund before it was eventually picked up.

The film is directed by  the award-winning Iranian-Danish filmmaker Ali Abbasi and looks at the life of Donald Trump in the 1970’s and 1980’s as he made his first moves into the New York real estate business.

It’s in two parts with the first set in the seventies when Trump is just starting out, working for his father as not much more than a rent collector as he embarks on his own career. The second part is set in the eighties when he is wielding more power and influence.

Along with Trump, the main protagonist is the influential attorney Roy Cohn  who gained prominence for  successfully prosecuting the American spies, Julius and Ethel  Rosenberg leading to their execution in the early 1950’s.

He  manipulated the legal system on behalf of powerful, conservative figures but lived as a closeted gay man, publicly denying his AIDS till the day he died.

Trump becomes the apprentice to Cohn as he assists him in his efforts to circumvent New York City planning restrictions to build Trump Tower and helps Trump amass wealth and power through deception, intimidation and media manipulation.

Cohn’s advice to Trump consisted  of three simple rules.

Rule 1. Attack. Attack. Attack. Rule 2. Admit nothing. Deny everything. Rule 3. Claim victory and never admit defeat.

We see how these become the foundations of Trump’s later ways of dealing with individuals, organisations and the media, as President and in his present-day speeches and interviews.

Abbasi depicts Trump as something of a loner, often in the presence of other people but with no close friends. Even his family relationships are fraught notably  with his “loser” brother Freddie who is only an international pilot and later a drug user who Trump won’t put up at his place.

The film does not completely vilify Trump and there are some sympathetic touches but it does show that he is a flawed character both from his upbringing as well as  his relationship with Cohn and these experiences do nothing to make him more sympathetic towards other people.

Sebastain Stan cleverly displays many of the characteristics of the later Trump and we see how he is progressively imbues Cohn’s cynical view of people and the world – there to be taken advantage of.

Jeremy Strong as Roy Cohn presents an almost totally amoral character who apart from his three rules of getting ahead also reveals a disdain for weakness in others and a savagery in getting his own way.

Maria Bakalova (Ivana Trump) and Sebastian Stan (Donald Trump)

Trump’s relationship with his first wife Ivana (Maria Bakalova) and his father Fred (Martin Donovan) are loosely sketched in but they could well have been fleshed out a bit more to add depth to the psychological study of Trump but they do suggest aspects of his personal relationships and the need to dominate .

Screenwriter Gabriel Sherman has skilfully crafted Trumps ascent with his actual recorded dialogue, written words  as well as some  well devised dialogue.

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Some Neo Impressionists: Gary McMillan and Elizabeth Rees

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

Gary McMillan, Scene 60 (detail)
Elizabeth Rees, Low Tide

Gary McMillan, City in Progress

Fox Jensen McCrory Gallery

September/October

Elizabeth Rees, The Bay

ARTIS Gallery

Until October 7

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

Two recent exhibitions see artists responding to the to the light, colours and textures of the environment just as artists of 150 years ago did with some variations on Impressionism.

In his latest exhibition “City in Progress” Gary McMillan has continued his depiction of views of the inner city, the motorways and industrial buildings.

These are nearly all seen from the interior of a car, capturing the often-fleeting images we have when driving. He also captures light in its various forms –sunlight at dawn and dusk, reflected light, refracted light, motorway lamps, industrial lights and traffic lights.

Each of the images has the simple title of “Scene” plus a number, an indication of the artist’s referencing photography and film which gives many of the works a slightly surreal quality.

As well as the connections to film and photography his work connects with traditional realist painting, pointillism and neo-Impressionism.

Many of the works capture the flash of recognition, of half seeing objects seen from a moving car as Scene 52 ($9500) – the rain speckled windscreen, parts of the car, overhead road signs, lamp standards and a blinding sun. They are the impressions  the brain takes in as it makes the journey.

Gary McMillan, Scene 63

Scene 63 ($9500) provides a complex view – light blooming on the car’s window screen, light shining through obscuring foliage, another view reflected in the cars side mirror. It becomes an image composed of different elements of light. But these various elements of light are all painted illusions created by the artist.

In these works, he investigates the way in which paint creates the illusion of the photographic pixel as well as the painterly impressionist dot.

At a distant his works look like photographs but as the viewer gets closer to the work one is more aware of the Seurat-like pointillism or the pixilation of low-resolution photographs.

With “Scene 57” ($5500) the pointillism is far more apparent with the sky and clouds stippled with the small dots of colour. The artist has added a sense of structure to the work with parallel power lines and one of his ever-present lamp posts.

Gary McMillan Scene 60

This focus on sky and cloud is also seen in “Scene 60”($8000) where the billowing cloud looks like a massive explosion saturated  with colour.

Where Gary McMillans exhibition looks at the urban environment Elizabeth Rees’s work is focussed on an isolated area of Northland. As she notes in the catalogue – “”The Bay” is a response to my new small-town life in the Bay of Islands where light ever changes the sea and bushclad land. My recent acquisition of a boatshed in a small tidal bay has now become my full-time studio. Being surrounded by water, this change has offered me yet another perspective – being able so closely connected to the natural environment.”

Her paintings owe much to the style of the Impressionists with a sense of the artist painting in the open air surrounded by her subject.

In responding to an environment she feels some connection with these paintings are a record of the various times of day, moods and qualities of light she has observed

Many of her previous works featured figures in a landscape, their presence providing a sense of isolation. In these newer works it is the landscape itself which provides that sense of isolation.

Elizabeth Rees, A High Tide

Here there are brooding landscapes such as  “Summer Shade” ($10,000) where the touches of colour seep through the dark foliage.

With works like “A High Tide” ($8000)) the  colours are almost bleached out with light swirling around the shapes of trees.

Elizabeth Rees, On the Beach

A similar work “On the Beach” ($8000 where the foliage is almost shattered by light, could have been used as the cover illustration for  the Nevil Shute novel “On the Beach” which tells of impending nuclear pollution in the South Pacific

A further connection could also see the work in reference to the origins of the title in the lines from T S Eliots “The Wasteland”

In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river. connection

Two of the works features figures as in   “Low Tide” ($8000) where the small figures contribute to the sense of isolation and drama. “Last Light” ($10,500) feels less successful as the two figures contemplating the vista do not contribute to the  sense of remoteness.

With “The Bay” ($10,500) there is  more colour contrast with the blue of the water and the sky more dominant and the colours of the foliage picked out by light.

Elizabeth Rees, The Bay

“Nestled in the Bay” ($13,500) also alludes to the human presence with several low buildings or boathouses which merge with the light colours of the sand and sea.

The merging of sands and sea is also apparent in “Dunes Beyond” ($10,500) where the dunes seem to be the foam of crashing waves.

With nearly all these works it is light which is the dominant aspect with the artist endeavouring to create an ethereal presence of cloud and sky .The hills and foliage created with scumbled paint give a sense of seeing through a darkened or fogged glass.

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Matilda the Musical: Fun to Go

Review by Malcolm Calder

Revolting children in Matilda the Musical

Roald Dahl’s Matilda the Musical

Book Dennis Kelly

Music and Lyrics Tim Minchin

North Shore Music Theatre and Amici Trust

Co-directors Grant Meese and Hamish Mouat

Musical Director Jack Barnard

Bruce Mason Theatre

Until 13 October 2024

Review by Malcolm Calder

 ‘My mummy says I’m a miracle,’ lisps a pampered early-maturer near the top of this deliciously-dark family show.  It is echoed by her diverse classmates and quickly becomes their mantra because, as they well know, even if you’re little you certainly can do a lot.

And they do.  In fact, there are sometimes so many little people doing things in this Matilda, one can readily understand why two directors are occasionally required.  Which might suggest that the principals, the subprincipals, the alternating Maggots, Worms and childrens’ choruses could easily get tangled up a bit.  Not on your life.  They flow as one.  And that is a credit Grant Meese, Hamish Mouat and those who have supported them.  The energy levels never flag and I came out feeling just a tad breathless.

Based on the splendidly grotesque Roald Dahl novel from 1988, and turned over to Tim Minchin and Dennis Kelly prior to its original West End opening in 2010, the music and the songs quickly become owned by the children, the story develops a life of its own and the whole thing becomes a fun-filled romp driven largely by Minchin’s nonsensically-wondrous lyrics as by Roald Dahl’s original.

It tells a tale of the collective power of children and how they address the perceived wrongs of the world they inhabit.  Their ringleader is one Matilda Wormwood – a young girl with the gift of telekinesis. She loves reading, has an unsupportive and cringe-worthy family and ends up at a school run by the terrible Miss Trunchbull.  But, with the help of teacher Miss Honey and town librarian Mrs Phelps, she and the other children overcome all the odds and triumph.  Of course they do.

In the process the character of Matilda’s awful parents are stripped bare; Mrs Trunchball,the butch, granite-faced principal who used to be an Olympic hammer thrower and unleashed by George Keenan-Davies is effectively neutered; the sweet natured Miss Honey – that teacher we all love to love – provides a neat balance that demonstrates not all grownups are nasty. 

As for the children themselves, they are irresistible, stomping and skipping through some marvellous choreography through both this show and through life, demonstrating that growing up is a lifelong endeavour. For kids, yes, but also for the children that we all remain at heart, this is wise, wicked, glorious fun.  Both chocolate cake and the hammer throw will never be the same again.

Of special note is the choreography of Hamish Mouat who manages to sustain multiple overlapping conversations yet never loses sight of a group statement.

Falling neatly into the school holidays, the timing of his show is impeccable.  It is pure, top-end family fare.

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The NZSO’s Copland, Cresswell and Mozart concert

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

Gemma New

Jupiter: Mozart & Copland

New Zealand Symphony Orchestra

Auckland Town Hall

September 21

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring which opened the NZSO’s latest concert featured music the composer originally wrote for Martha Graham’s ballet of the same name. The work has a simple narrative  following aBride and Husband as they get married and celebrate with the community. The work contains  various themes – faith, love and the joys of a new life.

The work is a celebration of the American West as well as an acknowledgement of the country’s past times of violence, referencing both the Civil War and World War II (the work was written in the midst of the war).

Copland used American folk music for melodies, harmonies and textures, that he had used in previous works such as Billy the Kid and  Rodeo and he also  included a theme and variations on the Shaker tune “Simple Gifts”.

Like those other two ballets the composer has responded to the notion of fluidity, representing the dancer’s movements.

The piece starts off with one of the great descriptions of the dawning day but with it is also the couple’s wedding day. This is described with soft chords from the strings, followed by soaring woodwinds with the flute and clarinet sketching out the storyline.

Quiet and wistful vistas and activity merge into cheery dance-like passages echoing the early American folk tunes and Conductor Gemma New responded with a little dance, caught up in these lively  rhythms

The work was punctuated by dramatic use of the percussion and horns which contrasted with the lively, dancing strings.

The finale with its grand statement along with Copland’s others works added a new dimension to the idea of rural America and the West elevating them to a sophisticated and iconic level.

The second work on the programme was Lyell Cresswell’s Piano Concerto No 3  which was given its world  premiere, played by Stephen De Pledge, a long-term admirer and advocate of the composer’s work.

The concerto is full of contrasts, between the instruments  themselves as well as the musical colours and textures which are all bound together with innovative instrumentation.

It opened much like the Copland with a dawning with suggestions of Nature, the stillness of landscape and the sounds of the forest. This was soon followed by the aggressive orchestra which merged with De Pledge’s piano where shimmering clouds hovered over the raucous strings.

Throughout the work there were musical suggestions of observations of his environment linked to a strange, abstract realm of sound with De Pledge and the orchestra contributing a range of textures – delicate, frenzied, lush and meticulous.

The brutal sounds of the orchestra were often matched by the equally brutal sounds of the piano, orchestra and piano creating interweaving and inventive sounds. These included the pianist using the instrument as a percussion instrument, knocking on the piano keys or playing long passages of a repeated single note.

Much of the piano work was sparse but there were occasional energetic bursts of sound accompanied by the orchestra  with the whispering strings at time sounding like the gentle wind in the trees or a breath slowly exhaled.

The final work in the programme was Mozart’s Symphony No 42 , The Jupiter one of his last symphonic works and one in which the composer is producing work which is at the centre of the transition of music form the classical to the Romantic…

With this work Gemma New seemed to be interested discovering nuance and depth in the composer’s work.

Even in the opening sequence which is full of drama she created contrasts so that the great melodies took on a more impressive sound with New seeing possibilities in the music that even Mozart  may not have been  aware of.

Her approach was obvious in the intensity of many passages, reducing some to more of a sigh while the dramatic moments featured immense surges of sounds.

The mysterious quality of the second movement featured  some beautiful balance between the woodwinds and orchestra while the energetic final movement with multiple themes and intricate playing  demonstrated the orchestra’s superior musicality.

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NZ Opera’s Rigoletto: a tale of love, despair, anger and corruption

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

Rigoletto (James Clayton) Image Jinki Cambronero

Rigoletto

Music by Giuseppe Verdi

Libretto by Francesco Maria Piave

NZ Opera, by arrangement with Opera Australia

Kiri Te Kanawa Aotea Centre

Until September 25

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

From the opening doom-laden chords through to the anguished sounds of the  final moments of Rigoletto the audience was carried along by the glorious music which conjured up feelings of love, despair, anger and malevolence as we follow one mans destiny, overcome by the deceitful and immoral world he lives in.

Tyrants, and  corrupt leaders have always had the ability to corrupt other people and surround themselves with equally corrupt yes men. Rigoletto takes us into that world of, deceit and amorality. It is a bleak world where the  occasional flicker of light and love is quickly extinguished

The first act opens with the Duke of Mantua and his courtiers cavorting in an impressive reception room with references to La dolce Vita of the 1950’s. It is a world where the dinner suits and fabulous dresses disguise the lecherous goings on.

We also encounter Rigoletto dressed as the court jester – a mixture of Ronald McDonald and Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker as he peels off his make up surrounded by his various costumes. He is an actor who must play many parts, just as the other members of the Dukes court play  out their roles.

The first act’s dramatic opening is just the start of probably one of the most mature and intelligent productions of the opera and one which kept the audience enthralled.

One of the problems I have always had with the opera is the curse with which Monterone damns Rigoletto and the duke early on. The notion that he has been cursed preys on Rigoletto mind throughout the opera and when his daughter dies in his arms, he shrieks about the curse has been fulfilled. Of course, the evil Duke still lives, so the curse has not affected him.

In fact, Rigoletto himself is the reason his daughter has been killed, Rigoletto himself is the curse and she dies because of his deceit and immorality rather than anyone else’s.

The Duke and his various courtiers are not particularly evil. They act as many men of business or politicians, using or skirting the law in an amoral fashion. It is Rigoletto who embarks on a course of revenge with the decision to hire an assassin to kill the Duke.

The courtiers and the Duke are also upfront about what they do. It is Rigoletto who presents a façade at court as well as to his daughter, withholding the truth of his relationship with the Duke and his early life even from her.

This veneer which he presents is his undoing. His pretense of an irritating, sycophantic fool at court hides a deep-seated resentment. His lack of awareness of his involvement with amoral activities as well as presenting as a cloying and over protective father is his weakness, his flaw, his curse.

James Clayton in the role of Rigoletto has to convey Rigoltto’s complex set of attributes and flaws. His character never becomes over demonstrative, there is always a sense of him holding back in his expression of love, hate, contempt. It is too easy to have Rigoletto portrayed as a twisted character who is obviously deformed physically as well as mentally and Clayton carefully avoids this.

His “Pari siama” (How alike we are) when singing of the assassin Sparafucile is haunting in its exposure of Rigoletto’s awareness of his own wretchedness, his voice catches with shuddering emotion at just the right point. Then he superbly transitions to his singing as devoted father of Gilda.  This ability to capture his two personalities, the heartless and the warm showed in just a couple minutes showed a singer with able to convey deep psychological states with exquisite refinement.

Gilda (Elena Perroni and the Duke (Amitai Pati) Image Jinki Cambronero

As Gilda, Elena Perroni created a character which expressed all the conflicting emotions of a young woman exposed to the ache and desperation of love, the terror of kidnap, the embarrassment of talking to her father about her seduction and the confusion of being dragged into the adult world.

Her voice soars with emotional expression in arias such as “Care nome” (Dear name) where effervescent and passion erupt.

Amitai Pati sang gloriously as the hedonist Duke with just the right mix of bravado and self-awareness. In his role as Gilda’s lover his voice took on an elegant combination of romanticism and cynicism which helped create a fully rounded, disreputable character.

Maddalena (Sian Sharp) and Sparafucile (Jud Arthur) Image Jinki Cambronero

Jud Arthur’s Sparafucile was suitably threatening with his mundane approach to killing,. His silky voice resonated with darkness and menace, his body tense with suppressed nervous energy.

Sian Sharp was impressive as Maddalena, Sparafucile’s sister and she added a sensual dimension to the final quartet when she sings with the Duke, Rigoletto and Gilda in a profound “Bella figlia” (Lovely woman).

The set designs by Michael Yeargan are impressive from the lavish palace interior to the brilliantly detailed house/ bar interior constructed on a revolving stage which helps concentrate the action.

This is a restaging of the work originally directed by Elijah Moshinsky and rehearsed by Shane Placentino who has done a splendid job in realizing the work.

As ever the New Zealand Opera Chorus was in great form and conductor James Judd deftly led the Auckland Philharmonia ensuring that the music added to the overall dramatic effect, dominating when it needed to but always allowing the singers the space to let their voices shine.

With this production director, designers, soloists chorus and musicians have brought together a seamless tale of brilliantly rounded characters with vivid emotions and contemporary relevance.

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ATC’s Girls and Boys: comic, dramatic, unexpected and gut wrenching.

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

Beatriz Romilly

Girls & Boys by Dennis Kelly

Directed by Eleanor Bishop

Auckland Theatre Company

ASB Waterfront  Theatre

Until September 22

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

Boys & Girls starts of as a very simple play with a clear narrative, some well-honed quips and some nicely sketched characters. All this is deftly presented by Beatriz Romilly as the sole unnamed central character who we meet standing in a queue at Naples airport where she tells of her misspent youth and her  as drunk / druggy / slaggy phase imbibing  drinks, drugs and a bit of cocaine. She gives us her youthful world-weary evaluation of a few European hot spots – Paris is a dump – Leeds with wider streets. Italians are fucked up but great.

Its also in this queue she meets her husband who endears himself to her by putting two wanna-be models in their place.  He is something of an entrepreneur, buying up old French and Italian furniture to sell in the UK.

Then its fast forward to her and the  children, who do have names – Leanne and Danny. And she gets a new job. She gets to be a PA in a TV company. She is good at her job, rises through the ranks to the point she is getting Baftas.

The first half of the play is pretty bright, the sex is terrific, the children predictable, she manages to thwart a potential rival, it’s a good life.

The latter part of the play is a bit darker. His business starts to falter, she suspects another woman, they are drifting apart. Its at this point she addresses the audience, as she has done a few times before _ “I am if course, just giving you one side”. While she doesn’t tell us what the other side is she comes to the realisation that he is jealous of her rising star while his is waning. The conclusion is devastating and echoes some of the remarks she makes earlier in the play about male violence and she muses in her final lines about the way the world has been made for men should be to stop men.

As well as giving life lessons to the children the woman also imparts them to the audience in her complex role of mother, shrink and life coach.

In charting the trajectory of her marriage she has to confront the puzzle of the man she loves and Romilly is able to convey her changing emotional states from the early,  witty observation to the visceral responeses she has to the final  tragedy. Romilly also manages to transform the physical nature of the woman herself from a statuesque figure at the beginning to a crumpled form at the conclusion.

Romilly gives a brilliantly textured performance as she builds a portrait of the woman, transitioning from her early  phase of her life to maturity with some clever vignettes as she takes on the voices of  other characters.

The simple set designed by Tracy Grant Lord was a masterpiece of design – at times just a small flat wall, then a doorway, then a dark box -and  was able  to change the dynamins of the action while the lighting of Filament 11 added to the atmosphere.

The soundscape created by Te Aihe Butler with its sounds of the outside world as well the music of Victoria Kelly all helped create intense  moods which were  generally, extremely effective but occasionally it becomes unnecessarily obvious and masked the dialogue.

The monologue at close to two hours is a remarkable display of acting – subtle, comic, dramatic, unexpected and gut wrenching.

The play is acutely relevant in telling of the tragedy of lives and families ripped apart by male violence and its debilitating aftereffects on individuals and society.

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Resetting the Coordinates of Performance art in NZ

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

Resetting the Coordinates

An anthology of performance art in Aotearoa New Zealand

Edited by Christopher Braddock, Ioana Gordon-Smith, Layne Waerea and Victoria Wynne-Jones

Massey University Press

Published September 2024

RRP $65.00

Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples

In 2014 The Walters Prize  included a work by Kalisolaite ‘Uhila where the artist inhabited the Auckland Art Gallery precinct for several months, living as a homeless person – eating sleeping and communicating with visitors, staff and other destitute  people. The work  was intended to draw attention to the plight of the homeless.

However, going to the gallery to find the ”art” and the artist necessitated searching the art gallery, the nearby park and streets until I found him wedged into an overhang on the gallery’s roof.

This search seemed more like a game of hide and seek rather than being immersed in a social /political experience /experiment. At the time It seemed to only involve me and the artist, reflecting on an encounter.

That encounter is what can loosely be called an example of  post-object art or performance art which has been evolving in New Zealand since the 1970’s.

With that encounter and many others one can see that performance  art requires an audience as well as documentation as many of the events are transient.

Now an  anthology/reader of performance art in New Zealand, ”Resetting the Coordinates” has been published,providing an in-depth survey of the artists and artworks in the  performance area which have happened over the past fifty years.

At the core of performance art  is the audience and the performer/artist,  the works having a theatrical element to them in which artist often draw attention to time, space, and body,

The  goal of these actions is to generate a reaction with themes which are commonly linked to life experiences of the artist themselves along with social and political criticism.

Darcell Apelu:, New Zealand Axemens Association: Womens subcommittee president
2 August 2014, documentation of performance.
Courtesy Artspace, Auckland. Photo by Peter Jennings

The book records a number of the activities which occurred as described in the introduction by editor Christiopher Braddock,

“If, on 2 April 1971, you had journeyed out across the unsealed metal roads to the west coast of the Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland region of the North Island of Aotearoa New Zealand, venturing as far as the remote Karekare Beach, to the north of Whatipu Beach and the great Manukau Harbour and south of Piha Beach, you would have come across the mystifying scene of ten people arduously sweeping the beach with long-handled yard brooms. “

Organised by Phil Dadson and colleagues this was the first in a series of purposeless works of which Dadson said : ‘This was work for the sake of the work, no particular purpose, no rewards’ across a ‘pointless-to-sweep stretch of beach’ in ‘communion with the elements and the place’.

These activities often existed outside the confines of the mainstream contemporary art scene  and were often undocumented. Many of the names included in the anthology will be recognisable because of their wide-ranging practice, others however have had lower profiles.

Central figures have been Phil Dadson, Jim Allen, Annea Lockwood, Peter Roche & Linda Buis, Andrew Drummond, Daniel Malone, Shannon Te Ao and Lonnie Hutchinson. There have also been numerous other practitioners who are included in the book.

Christopher Braddock, one of the editors says “Mainstream art history tends to prioritise static forms of art that are more commodifiable and saleable such as painting and sculpture. Anthologies often prioritise these artforms, such as Michael Dunn’s “New Zealand Painting: A Concise History| published in 2004. Furthermore, large-scale anthologies can cement these institutional prejudices, such as Hamish Keith’s The Big Picture: The History of New Zealand Art from 1642 (2007) which largely ignores performance art.”

The book underlines the fact that performance art is a distinctive part of recent art history, with its activities presenting  social and political  approaches which  emphasises the  connections between artist, audience and art critic /  historian.

These events often combined elements of anarchy,  humour, spirituality, repetition, the unplanned and unexpected.

There are a several chapters which examine the  history and development of performance art, some which look at the aspects of woman’s art practice, the development of Māori and Pacific based works, queer performance art and performance art in post -quake Christchurch.

There are numerous photographs and records of the activities which only give a limited appreciation of the performances such as Annae Lockwood piano burning while the multiple images of Andrew Drummond’s projects give some sense of the scale of his work.

CardboardConfessional_
Audrey Baldwin, Oscar Bannan, Bridget Harris, NeilMacLeod, Annemieke Montagne, Pat Parkin, Jennifer. Katherine Shield
2016, documentation of performance for the Centre of Contemporary Art Toi Moroki programme,Ōtautahi Christchurch.
Courtesy Centre of Contemporary Art Toi Moroki. Photo by Janneth Gi

Among the other projects included are the documentation project of the Christchurch “Cardboard Confessional” (2016) developed by Audrey Baldwin et al, Louise Potiki Bryant’s dance work “Te Taki o te Ua / The Sound of Rain” (2001), Jeremy Leatinu’u’s Queen Victoria (2013) where the artist contemplated statues of the queen,  Juliet Batten’s Women’s Project of 1985 at Te Henga Beach and Bruce Barber’s “Mt Eden Crater Performance  (1973) which was a collaboration with Solar Plexus as part of the drumming event initiated by Phil Dadson..

It is a fascinating book with lots of performances which have been rarely written about, seemingly lost to history but which tell us much about the social, political and spiritual examinations and soundings which artists have made.

The writers include  Natasha Conland, Gregory Burke, Ioana Gordon-Smith, Khye Hitchcock, Audrey Baldwin, Bruce E Phillips and Heather Galbraith

To subscribe or follow New Zealand Arts Review site – www.nzartsreview.org.

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