Jackie Clarke Performer Penny Dodd Musician Jennifer Ward-Lealand Director Joanna Murray-Smith Writer Callum Brodie Producer Lachie Oliver-Kerby SoundDesigner Michael Goodwin LightingDesignerandoperator Rachel Marlow SetDesigner
Reviewed by Jonh Daly-Peoples
‘Songs for Nobodies’, could be billed as the five female singers who provided the sonic background to the twentieth century. We meet Judy Garland, Patsy Cline, Billie Holiday, Edith Piaf and Maria Callas as their lives intersect with five “nobodies” whose lives are transformed by their encounters
The Australian playwright Joanna Murray-Smith comes with good credentials and Auckland audience will have seen her plays recently. There was “Switzerland” at ATC and “Three Little Words” at the PumpHouse and I have seen her brilliant play “Julia” in Brisbane which charts the political life of Julia Gillard
Jackie Clarke provides a sensational performance as the audience is taken on a musical journey with insights into the lives of some famous singers and their casual meetings with five “nobodies”. The songs which she sings include “Come Rain or Come Shine,” “Crazy,” “Amazing Grace,” and “Ain’t Nobody’s Business If I Do.”
Highlights of the show are her Edith Piaf singing “Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien” and Maria Callas singing one of Tosa’s arias from the eponymous opera.
This isn’t just five singers belting out their well-known hits, there is a sense of the “nobodies” having their lives changed by encounters with the singers in imagined settings, the songs, the singers and the environments acting as a backdrop to their changed world and lives.
Through the course of the play she creates characters ranging from miserable lavatory attendant who encounters Judy Garland in a bathroom and fixes he hemline to a fashion reporter trying to get out of fashion reporting by doing a piece on an taciturn Billie Holiday
Director Jennifer Ward-Lealand has kept the staging simple, with the focus always on Jackie Clarke and her remarkable performance in creating the characters of the five distinctive “nobodies” and four singers (she doesn’t try to tackle Callas). She moves effortlessly between the characters giving them personalities and presence along with singing their signature songs.
Pianist Penny Dodd, the sole musician on stage accompanies Clarke with skilful musical direction and just the right amount of volume, never intruding on the singers and providing a sense of being in a nightclub.
‘Songs for Nobodies’ is a theatrical gem with one of New Zealand great voices taking us on an musical journey with emotional depth.
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GMG Productions, Crossroads Live and Worklight Productions
Director Timothy Sheader
Set and Costume Design Tom Scutt
Choreography Drew McOnie
Music Director Hugh Hayden-Brown
Asst Choreography Courtney Arango
Assoc Director Alli Coyne
Sound Design Nick Lidster
Music Supervision Tom Deering
Lighting Design Lee Curran
With (Principals) Luke Street, Javon King, Hannah Richardson, Ethan Hardy Benson, Grant Hodges, Kodiak Thompson, Thomas McFerran, Eric W Scheeck, Will Silver
(Ensemble) Joshua Bess, Ashley Chafer, Filippo Coffano, Kalei Cotecson, Joshua Dormor, Savannah Fisher, Elizabeth Fullalove, Icis Hammond, Dominick Hubbard, Jake MacPhee, Thoman McFerran. Jessica Meegan, Caroline Perry, Sandy Redd, Henry Rollo, Erich W Schleck, Will Silver, Jordan Michael Todd
Civic Theatre, Auckland
Booking to 15 November
St James Theatre, Wellington, 18-21 November
Isaac Theatre Royal, Christchurch, 2-6 December
Familiarity Breeds Endearment
Someone once argued that being both familiar and comfortable can induce conflict so they counter each other out.
They were wrong. This Jesus Christ Superstar is both. It doesn’t judge. It doesn’t editorialise. And its basic premise isn’t even debatable. It simply entertains.
As such its very familiarity brings only a very welcome endearment.
Jesus Christ Superstar tells a story about a man and the legend that has shaped civilisations for more than two millenia – whether myth or not. And that’s what good productions are all about – telling a simple story (in this case a fairly well-known one), telling it well and leaving its audiences with happy, satisfied smiles on their faces. It succeeds.
This cast is rather well-credentialled, is drawn from many different parts of the globe, some going right back to this production’s birthplace at the Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre in London a few years ago now.
Rather than Jesus, JCS, presents Judas as the fulcrum. NYC and Melbourne based Javon King gives us a Judas of loyalty, happiness, greed, conviction and then ultimately confusion and even regret before his own death. He has light. He has shade. And, as an anti-hero, he shows us an awful lot in between.
He shares influence over Jesus with what I felt was a slightly under-played Mary Magdalene (London-based Hannah Richardson) although her carefully nuanced ‘I don’t Know how to Love Him’ was well-received.
Offsetting them is the humble, confused and, at times, angry central figure of Jesus (fellow-Londoner Luke Street). While Street has played Judas in other iterations, it wasn’t until Jesus’ big song (‘Gethsemane’ in Act 2) that I found him more convincing. So did this audience.
Supporting roles were everywhere. Standouts for me included the Annas-Caiaphus duo and their Pharisees as well as the brief appearance of the deliciously faux-cabaret Pilate. Don’t ask me why, but I found his idiotic and nonchalant antics to somehow echo a certain orange-haired contemporary American politician.
Above all though, it was a joy to see such a well-rehearsed cast laden with slick professionalism eliciting a wide range of emotional responses not to mention a final scene though it would be unfair to detail here.
The set is brilliantly conceived, the costumes fit the purpose and some of the choreography memorably outstanding. However, this IS a gritty rock concert rather than a vaudeville-inspired glammed-up musical and the band, cunningly buried in various parts of an industrial-quality set show it to be just that. An Australian colleague mentioned to me that some audiences across the ditch found this production unduly loud. Not so me ! This IS a rock-musical after all – the hand-held mics tell us that! Yet the strong baseline only managed to kick me in the sternum a couple of times towards the end.
Using the well-documented final days of Christ’s life, JCS of course uses music to connect with a generation that now has grey hair, along with many of their children and more than a sprinkling of grandchildren.
However, it is something of a shock to realise it is now more than fifty years since JCS was birthed. With Andrew Lloyd Webber’s driving rock score it broke new ground at the time and was eagerly awaited – but not entirely.
By the early 1970s we were a decade on from the Beatles and the Stones and a decade where popular music had taken a new direction. For some there were even more serious directions to take. It was a time for concept albums.
And just like The Kinks’s Arthur (or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire), or the Who’s Tommy, or Jethro Tull’s Thick As a Brick or even Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, creative musicians had paved the way for Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice to tell a well-established story from a book pretty much everyone knows, and found a new way to retell it – bringing Judas more into the scheme of things.
This particular concept album was eagerly awaited. I fondly remember sitting with a group of friends in a rather dingy flat just behind Sydney’s Kings Cross in 1971 and playing it over and over through the night when the long-due LP (remember them?) finally arrived.
But a staged production took a little longer. The Americans had a go but fell foul of dissenting voices – primarily over religious and racial divides (funny how some things don’t change) – and a rage of licensing issues. It took Australian impressario Robert Stigwood to take a punt, lock in the world-wide rights with the creators and convince fellow-Australian Jim Sharman to wave his magic director’s wand over things before it bounced onto the stage at the Westend’s Palace Theatre in 1972.
So while most other rock operas would tell the story of Jesus from the perspective of the man himself (the crossover between lead singer and preacher was a fairly well-trodden area even in 1970), JCS takes Judas’s point of view and throws some sympathetic light upon Mary Magdalene too.
Jesus might have been a charismatic leader, wise beyond his experience and adored by his sychophants. But they are only human. And it is Judas, manipulatively loyal and true, who misguidedly accepts the thirty pieces of silver, while Jesus becomes well aware of what is about to happen to him and resigns himself near-passively to his fate.
Perhaps cynically, I must admit I have always loved the closest thing Webber and Rice got to editorialising when the Apostles sing …
The four works on the NZSO’s Rhythm & Dance programme were infused with dance music of the twentieth century, all linked to the music of the Jazz Era with dance tunes which were immediately recognizable with infective portraits of places and events.
Ten years ago the Auckland Arts Festival presented a concert version of John Adam’s Nixon in China one of the great operatic works of the late twentieth century recounting the visit of President Nixon to the Republic of China in 1972 and his meeting with Mao Zedong.
The opera has several dance-like tunes and “The Chairman Dances” is an interlude with no singing that has been described by Adams as an “outtake” from the opera depicting Madame Mao gate-crashing a presidential banquet and performing a dance.
The percussion and woodwinds opened “The Chairman Dances” sequence before slowly building Adam’s minimalism sounds which featured a mixture of delicacy and robust sections.
The music relies on a clever mixture of percussion, bassoon, viola, along with an insistent, foxtrot rhythm with some bell–like sounds introduced Madame Mao along with music that referenced 1930s Chinese film music.
The work finished with a typical Adams percussion combination of piano, wood block and snare drum.
Conductor Gemma New responded to the music with her own flowing and floating gestures, notably in the animated fox trot sequence and the bell liken sounds which referenced Madame Mao’s early career as a film actress.
Patrick Barry
Copland’s “Clarinet Concerto” saw soloist Patrick Barry navigating the technical capabilities of the clarinet with a marvellous dexterity. After a soulful, filmic opening. his instrument soured above the orchestra, its bright sound weaving through the sounds of the orchestra.
There were sections where the clarinet captured the vast, open spirit of the American West and others where jazz was more dominant. Then there were passages when the orchestra seemed to be replicating the sounds of the clarinet and some boisterous sequences where the piano provided some gritty syncopation.
The orchestra and clarinet hurtled towards the finale with a fast and jazzy sounds, blending popular rhythms along with a reference to George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue.
Gabriela Ortiz ‘s “Anropolis” is a portrait of Mexico City, describing the sounds and energy of the dance halls and clubs of the city. Central to the performance was the wide range of percussion instruments which delivered an edgy, constantly evolving percussion background.
From the massive opening drum and brass displays the work moved to a high energy soundscape punctuated by flute and brass where waves of sounds were constantly interrupted by the drum soloist. The work transitioned through different musical styles, including traditional Mexican sounds, mambo, and experimental punk with the musicians briefly shouting out in unison in a nod to dance hall routines.
This was high velocity music with some hectic, playful sequences which the orchestra players and conductor appeared to relish.
The last work on the programme was the “Symphonic Dances from West Side Story” by American conductor and composer Leonard Bernstein. Here, we get the ten-movement suite of orchestral music from West Side Story, with its recognizable tunes, familiar Latin rhythms and elements of jazz.
From the rhythmic finger snapping used by the Jets and the Sharks during the opening instrumental sequences through the jazzy dance sequences and the romantic interludes the music captured the spirit of New York.
The music has its emotional centre in the wholesomeness of Tony and Maria’s relationship conveyed by “Somewhere”, but it was shattered by the dark hatred of their environment and the gangs conveyed by the gangland themes.
Throughout the work Bernstein cleverly changes the pace of the music the high energy and jazzy sequences contrasting with the romantic scenes of the two lovers.
My invitation to Cirque Alice said that the dress code for the event was A Touch of Wonderland, a request which quite a few people had taken up with several sequined jackets and dresses seated close to me and some children wearing their Frozen dresses. The Civic Theatre was at its best as well, with the winking stars and the occasional comet streaking across the ceiling of the theatre. The theatre itself was flossed up with spotlights and laser light sparkling across the stage and audience, creating the setting for an extravagant evening. Then we were reminded of where we are and who we were to meet when the White Queen commanded us to ensure there was no flash photography or it would be “off with your head”.
Cirque du Soleil shows are always elaborate gymnastic displays, but they are always imbedded with a story or narrative which loosely holds all the characters and the events together.
The advertising for Cirque Alice said it was a reimagined Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll’s classic tale of characters and adventures but like a lot of Cirque show after establishing the reason for being there the evening takes on a rather casual approach to the narrative. The characters are all immediately recognisable – Alice, White Rabbit and Mad Hatter but their adventures and exploits take you to another realm.
The show featured a lineup of some of the greatest circus and magic performers on earth – from America’s Got Talent: Fantasy League, and Cirque du Soleil the cast members were among the very best acrobatic, music and dance talent in the world.
The various acts were set to an enthralling soundtrack of newly arranged contemporary takes on some of the world’s favourite classical hits – Lakme, Swan Lake and Flight of the Bumble Bee while the costumes designed by Angele Aaron were stunning.
The March Hare and Alice
Alice (Layla Schillert) is on stage a lot of the time and with her brilliant soprano voice she wowed the audiencia with some captivating singing. There are even has a few sequences which have been taken for the book. So that when she drinks from an unlabelled bottle, she ends up fifteen metres above the stage with a vast train of a dress.
But it is the Mad Hatter (Darren “Dizzy” Partridge) who is the stand-out performer and one of the few characters who speaks to the audience He is the part magician who gets audience members on the stage. We also get quite a lot of The White Rabbit (Raphael Papo) playing his violin.
The various acts are cleverly structured so that there are spectacular acts where the audience holds its collective breath for several minutes along with acts which are just amazing for the dexterity of the performers as they create small, intimate, poetic moments.
The Caterpillar
One of these poetic more acts was The Caterpillar (Munkhjin Tuvd, Bayarmaa Ganbat, Shinechimeg Otgonbayar and Dolgorsuren Ganbold) where the four performers balance and intertwine with each other bodies creating extraordinary patterns and rhythms.
Then there were acts where you can’t really believe what someone is attempting. There have been many cabaret acts where performers balance a short platform on a ball, managing to keep their balance, but when The Dormouse (Daniel Onofre) starts to pile six tubes on top of each other your heart is in your mouth and then while he is wobbling on this pile of tubes, he introduced a couple of hula hoops which he threaded through his legs and body – ridiculously complicated.
The White King and White Queen (Mathieu and Myriam Lessard) wearing roller skates performed a duo, spinning around on top of a small circular stage and it looked a bit inelegant. Roller skating is pretty difficult at the best of times but the balancing and twirling that they engaged in started to seem impossible. Then when they began spinning with the King supporting the Queen with only a strip held between their two mouths the act became unbelievable and dangerous.
There were a couple of acts where the performers strength and skill was obvious. The Knights (Fadhili Rashidi and Ibrahim Mwaimise) walk around, climb steps and ladders all the time balancing each other on their heads. They did it all with such grace and ease that it makes you think it must be easy, until one of them nearly trips and you realise it’s not that easy.
A Cirque du Soleil show is always more than just entertainment. You get to see people whose skills are exceptional and whose acts are refined to the point that they transcend regular circus and acrobatic performances such as we regularly see the at the Auckland Festival. This is what years of practice, concentration and commitment can achieve.
From Scratch: Songs for Unsung Heroes is a new film of From Scratch performing at St Davids church in Auckland earlier this year produced, directed and edited by John Pain.
The film also includes two shorter works from the same event of the ensemble accompanying video art from two of Aotearoa’s leading practitioners; Black Moon by Teresa Peters, and Metroplex II by Gregory Bennett.
The five members of From Scratch (Phil Dadson, Adian Croucher, Shane Curry, Darryn Harkness and Chris O’Conner) play their assorted instruments ranging from standard musical instruments such as the melodia (keyboard harmonica) used by Phil Dadson to the hand-crafted instruments like the PVC piping which have been central to the group’s activities.
The instruments produce a range of percussive sounds, which help create a sonic ambience somewhere between the primitive and the highly sophisticated.
The words of Songs for Unsung Heroes are sung in a monotone and at a pace determined by the players. The low sounds of the song are not clear but fit well within the ambience created by the musicians like a musical drone adding to the mystery and power of the work.
“Let us sing for unsung heroes, Those who lay their dreams aside. Sing a song for unsung heroes, Sing from sea to shining sea. Sing the song of liberty.”
The enjoyment and novelty of a From Scratch performance is from the seemingly uncoordinated waves and ripples of sounds which are created by the group who appear to concentrate on their individual instruments, but they are in fact intricately linked, their individual sounds and rhythms merging and diverging in surprising and innovative ways.
At times each of the players seems to be in a trance-like state focussed on their own individual instrument but through their performance are producing a soundscape which contributes to a breathing and heaving structure.
The endless variety of sounds, rhythms and movements has its visual equivalent in the two films which make use of Gregory Bennet’s animated films which explore a synthetic world, using high-end 3D animation. These endless parades of figures performing within an Escher- like environment, morphing into various patterns and creating weird environments mirrors the sounds of the music.
Songs for Unsung Heroes is focused on the performers as much as their playing. Their concentration seems to suggest that their focus is on inner linked patterns and rhythmic fields.
One of the almost unrecognised literary / artistic areas of New Zealand culture has been the zine.
Zines, a corruption of magazines or fanzines are non-commercial, self-published, small-circulation booklets, often produced by hand or photocopied in limited editions of often only a few hundred copies. They are derived from anti-establishment, punk-rock music, and other activist cultures, providing a platform for personal expression, niche topics, and marginalized voices.
Chris Knox, Jesus on a stick
Even though the zine in New Zealand has been widespread there has been no serious writing about the form. Until now. Bryce Galloway’s “Zines NZ: Punk to present” is written by a zine devotee and is packed with hundreds of images of zine covers and spreads, most of which charm with lopsided collaged energy and all of which possess a singular vision. Zines are so often ephemeral and elusive, and this book’s tribute to so many rich and distinctive voices ensures that their history is not lost.
Some of the early names like Barry Linton and Dylan Horrocks who were major forces early on are mentioned along with others who helped establish the numerous outlets which has seen a plethora of voices over the past forty years.
Galloway says the impetus for the book was largely personal, having been a zine creator himself
“I was interested in finding the thread from today’s plethora of zinefests back to the punk rock zines of early 80s Aotearoa. In 2015 I wrote a rather subjective history of 21st century zines in Aotearoa. I released this as issue 56 of Incredibly Hot Sex with Hideous People, also presenting it at pop culture and bibliographic conferences. I was thinking, who’s qualified, who could I commission to research and write the earlier part of Aotearoa’s zine history? Eventually I decided I should just take the job on myself.”
He acknowledges that the zine has been side-lined by the art/ publishing/ library world. “I’m sure they’ve been looked down upon, but many in the zine scene wouldn’t have it any other way. For all those who celebrate the growth in this media, there’s others who see the shift from scrappy punk zines and zinefests in community halls to zinefests in major galleries and the like as evidence that zines have lost their edge. I don’t think that’s true but there’s something to be said for the aesthetic challenge made by your scrappy punk zines versus your well-crafted Risograph-printed chapbook for example.”
While Galloway has written this history of the zine, he has also included extensive quotes from around fifty other zine creators who expand the history with all the various personal motivations behind the various concepts and designs.
The book is packed with information along with dozens of illustrations from the zines produced by authors / designers who are well-known such as Chris Knox and David Tulloch to lesser known, but prolific names like Sarah Laing and Indira Neville.
Indira Neville, An Incompetent Girl
Along with being a history of the zine in New Zealand Galloway has provided a personal political and social history of New Zealand featuring significant events and individuals who have helped create change in New Zealand over the last forty years.
Following a brief run in Wellington, Stephen Papps’ one-man show Social Animal graces the upstairs room at Q for the next week or so.
I lost track of how many and didn’t count anyway, but Social Animal enables Papps to reveal a panoply of characterisations that amply display his skills as a character-actor of some standing. These are the people in and around Joe’s rather narrow world which is that of a fading and insecure
mediocrity. Some are colleagues, some wield power and others don’t. But all are his friends – albeit in different ways and at different times. But only occasionally so. It is the world of theatre after all.
Almost incidentally the central character Joe Quigley – the fading actor – deals with his own realities by finding another reality. A dog. And not just any dog, but a former racing greyhound. And getting there enables Papps to reveal a further panoply of dog characterisations. That’s it a nutshell.
For me, the dogs were the highlight of this one-man performance. I was never in doubt about which dog was which and what they were up to. Pretty much doggie things really.
Before we got to the dogs though, many characters were introduced from the top of the show – some only fleetingly – and I must admit to being a little confused a couple of times. The standout character of course never exists at all … although this only serves to heighten the final denoument.
There are some great comedy lines, many bitter-sweet moments, some hilarious schlapstick and a heap of pace changes. All of which lead to an up, then down, then up again finale.
The Testaments of Ann Lee comes with excellent credentials having been written by Mona Fastvold and her partner Brady Corbet, with whom she co-wrote The Brutalist which was based on the life of émigré architect Marcel Breuer. That film was a metaphor for the struggles of an artist in post-war America. Testament follows the life of Shaker founder Ann Lee and is a metaphor for religious and social change in pre and post Revolutionary America
It is an earnest attempt to give Ann Lee her place in history as a major religious figure who endured religious persecution in 18th-century England for her position as a female preacher as well as in America where she and the Shaker movement were seen as unpatriotic pacifists.
The early American Shakers were known for their skill in what is now seen as stylish, minimalist furniture and their approach to simple architecture and there are sequences of constructing buildings and simple objects but not much about the tenets of the religion
Lee is played by Amanda Seyfried, with Lewis Pullman as her brother William and Christopher Abbott as her husband Abraham, who fathers her four children, all of whom die in infancy. Their deaths probably affected her, contributing to her aversion to marriage and sexual activity, influencing the subsequent Shaker celibacy doctrine.
Director Mona Fastvold is great at meaningful close-ups and handles the dance sequences as if they were only part of this religion/cult which has any merit or meaning. In these dramatic Broadway musical – like sequences there is lot of shaking, shivering, hand clapping and foot stomping ranging from some ecstatic dancing in her early Manchester days where the dancers look to be on acid trips to the more sedate Shaker dances the groups still perform
While the film has obvious good intentions, illuminating the history of Ann Lee and her contribution to American religious history it can also seen a cautionary tale about the dangers of being captured by religious leaders and ideology. The dangers of believing what self -declared prophets tell you, believing in visions and biblical interpretations. The film demonstrates how people can be sucked into religions or cults based on false information and interpretations.
Maybe audiences know about the revolt and reforms of religion in eighteenth century. Europe and the growth of alternative faiths and religious leaders such the Methodist Movement with John Wesley and early feminists like Selina Hastings, the Countess of Huntingdon, but the film provides little about what Ann Lee was reacting against.
While we see Ann Lee commanding groups of people we don’t get a sense of her charisma or oratory skills and her occasional visions of deities and paradise make her out to be more of a charlatan than prophet.
The big unanswered question looms over all the intense close-ups and hectic dance sequences is What is Ann Lee’s testament? What is her way to save souls. – celibacy, public acknowledgment of sins and misdeeds as well as dancing – I could go with the dancing.
The Testaments of Ann Lee comes with excellent credentials having been written by Mona Fastvold and her partner Brady Corbet, with whom she co-wrote The Brutalist which was based on the life of émigré architect Marcel Breuer. That film was a metaphor for the struggles of an artist in post-war America. Testament follows the life of Shaker founder Ann Lee and is a metaphor for religious and social change in pre and post Revolutionary America
It is an earnest attempt to give Ann Lee her place in history as a major religious figure who endured religious persecution in 18th-century England for her position as a female preacher as well as in America where she and the Shaker movement were seen as unpatriotic pacifists.
The early American Shakers were known for their skill in what is now seen as stylish, minimalist furniture and their approach to simple architecture and there are sequences of constructing buildings and simple objects but not much about the tenets of the religion
Lee is played by Amanda Seyfried, with Lewis Pullman as her brother William and Christopher Abbott as her husband Abraham, who fathers her four children, all of whom die in infancy. Their deaths probably affected her, contributing to her aversion to marriage and sexual activity, influencing the subsequent Shaker celibacy doctrine.
Director Mona Fastvold is great at meaningful close-ups and handles the dance sequences as if they were only part of this religion/cult which has any merit or meaning. In these dramatic Broadway musical – like sequences there is lot of shaking, shivering, hand clapping and foot stomping ranging from some ecstatic dancing in her early Manchester days where the dancers look to be on acid trips to the more sedate Shaker dances the groups still perform
While the film has obvious good intentions, illuminating the history of Ann Lee and her contribution to American religious history it can also seen a cautionary tale about the dangers of being captured by religious leaders and ideology. The dangers of believing what self -declared prophets tell you, believing in visions and biblical interpretations. The film demonstrates how people can be sucked into religions or cults based on false information and interpretations.
Maybe audiences know about the revolt and reforms of religion in eighteenth century. Europe and the growth of alternative faiths and religious leaders such the Methodist Movement with John Wesley and early feminists like Selina Hastings, the Countess of Huntingdon, but the film provides little about what Ann Lee was reacting against.
While we see Ann Lee commanding groups of people we don’t get a sense of her charisma or oratory skills and her occasional visions of deities and paradise make her out to be more of a charlatan than prophet.
The big unanswered question looms over all the intense close-ups and hectic dance sequences is What is Ann Lee’s testament? What is her way to save souls. – celibacy, public acknowledgment of sins and misdeeds as well as dancing – I could go with the dancing.
John Daly-Peoples Arts Writer / Arts Consultant Arts Editor, NZ Arts Review
Julia Bullock, Bluebeards Castle, Sincere Apologies
The New York Classic review last year featured a review of Julia Bullock by Rick Perdian
“It would have once been almost impossible to imagine a vocal recital by a major artist with songs by Alban Berg, Bob Dylan, and Rodgers & Hammerstein on the program. These are different times, however, and what once would have been dubious box-office is now perfectly attuned to the times.
Bullock opened the recital with songs by Samuel Barber, whose embrace of Romanticism put him at odds with the more progressive elements of the musical establishment in mid-twentieth-century America. The three songs which she sang—“My Lizard (Wish for a Young Love),” “Nuvoletta,” and “The Daisies”—outlined the wistful nostalgia, zaniness, and embrace of the bizarre that would course through the recital.
As with the Barber songs, Bullock performed songs by Kurt Weill which spanned the composer’s career from his collaboration with Bertolt Brecht in Germany to his Broadway hit, Lady in the Dark.
The outlier was the first, “Complainte de la Seine,” which Weill composed in Paris after fleeing Nazi Germany. This setting, like earlier songs dating from Weill’s collaboration with Brecht, “Ballade vom ertrunkenden Mädchen” and “Song of the Hard Nut,” show the composer at his most hard-edged and bleak. With crystalline tone, perfect pitch, and a delivery void of sentiment, Bullock sang of cadavers resting at the bottom of the Seine, the Marxist revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg’s decaying corpse in a Berlin canal, and the calculated transactions that fuel capitalism. With “The “Princess of Pure Delight,” Bullock switched gears, projecting a cool sophistication that evoked the era.
Bullock’s most sublime singing came with Berg’s Altenberg Lieder. Viennese audience’s greeted the songs with such derision in 1913 that Berg never permitted them to be performed during his lifetime. The five songs are settings of enigmatic verses by the poet Peter Altenberg which he sent to friends on postcards.
A substantial portion of the second half of the recital was devoted to songs by Richard Rodger and Oscar Hammerstein. Bullock told the audience that their music had been a part of her life from her earliest years growing up in St. Louis. “Dites-Mois” from South Pacific was the first song that she ever sang in public at the age of ten before an audience of thousands.
The audience was enthralled as Bullock sang some of the greatest hits from The Sound of Music and South Pacific. For the most part, these were straightforward renditions of beloved songs, but Bullock and Brown could be provocative, such as in “You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught” from South Pacific. Bullock delivered the song’s message with a matter-of-fact directness which was intensified by Brown’s punctuation from the piano.
There were also songs linked to Odetta Holmes,who was known as the voice of the American civil rights movement in the Sixties. Bullock sang Bob Dylan’s “Masters of War” with a penetrating, unflinching directness. Odetta’s arrangement of “Going Home” and Elizabeth’s Cotten’s “Freight Train” followed.
Bullock ended the recital with Converse’s poignant ballad “How Sad, How Lovely,” a meditation on the loveliness and sadness of life.”
Bluebeards Castle
This version of Bluebeards Castel was previously performed in Wellington and Christchurch in 2023. Elizabeth Kerr reviewed the work in Five Lines.
“The dramatic trajectory of this contemporary production of Bluebeard’s Castle is vivid and deeply moving from its opening bars till the passionate conclusion. ..For me, its greatest wonder is the faithful use of the original text and music to tell a tragic story of today, a superb creative reimagining of Bartók ‘s only opera.
Bartók wrote Bluebeard’s Castle in 1911. He was 30 years old. The Gothic work, with a libretto by the composer’s friend, poet Béla Balázs, was based on the French folk tale published in the 17th century by Charles Perrault.
The opera has a singing cast of two with a full orchestra. The role of Bluebeard is sung in this New Zealand performance by US baritone Lester Lynch, and his wife Judith by UK soprano Susan Bullock. As the semi-staged production opens, the strings of the NZSO set a rather creepy mood. The couple arrive onstage, Judith appearing confused and troubled. “If you left me, I’d be lost and all alone here,” she sings.
In the original, Judith was Bluebeard’s very young wife, brought to his cold, dark castle and confronted by seven locked doors, which open in turn throughout the opera, revealing their disturbing contents. The locked doors are replaced by a suitcase, and from it are drawn contents representing memories of Judith’s life and their relationship.
Bluebeard’s Castle is often described as a Symbolist opera and symbolism remains strong in this production. ..This is the writing of a young Bartók, strongly influenced by Romantic composers and Debussy, and his score, including the challenging and chromatic vocal lines, is beautiful, colourful and lush. It is also highly dramatic and alongside the theatrical symbolism are meaningful musical motives, most noticeable the “blood” motive of a minor second, a semitone, appearing whenever Judith, remembering past losses and fears, refers to blood.
A final “door” brings the impassioned denouement. “When this door is opened, Judith, you will find my wife there waiting”, sings Bluebeard, handing her a mirror from the suitcase. The poetry in the libretto really blooms here, as Bluebeard sings of his former wives, the young lover, wife of the dawn, the young wife of his “noontime”, the mother, wife of his evening.
The younger wives return, also holding mirrors, and as Bluebeard sings of each, Judith offers a repetitive and sad little refrain from her chair. “Ah, compared to her, I am nothing.” But she is, he tells her, his wife of the night. Musically, Bartók brings the opera to its big romantic climax. “Eternal beauty!” sings Bluebeard. “Now, all turns to darkness.”
The mood in music and staging fades quietly. Tenderly, Bluebeard brings Judith a cup of tea. The lights also fade to blackness.”
Sincere Apologies
“Sincere Apologies” is an Australian production with relevance to New Zealand with a recent review of the production in “My Melbourne Arts” praising the low key, audience based play.
“Sincere Apologies” begins unassumingly: an envelope is handed to an audience member and it is passed from hand to hand. No words are exchanged, no introduction is made, no actors are present. It’s just a low-key game of “pass the parcel” that opens the door to a chorus of voices and a world of regret.
Fifty real apologies are sealed inside fifty envelopes that are distributed to the audience. These span from 1990 all the way into the future, each one factual and collected from documented expressions of remorse by public figures, private correspondence, and personal moments by the shows three creators, Dan Koop, Jamie Lewis and David Williams. One by one, in numerical order, audience members step up to a microphone and read them aloud.
Some are weighty and political – a Prime Minister’s apology to the Stolen Generation or BP’s statement following an oil spill. Others tap into pop culture’s hall of infamy – like Kanye West and Taylor Swift. Then, there are the apologies from the creators themselves, adding a deeper intimate layer to the mix. There are no actors in Sincere Apologies. No one introduces the show or welcomes the audience. Even at the end, when we clap, it’s not for performers on stage, but for each other, and the three tech staff quietly stationed in the corner. The audience is the cast, and in that shared vulnerability something almost communal forms. Strangers stumble over words, laugh nervously, or surprisingly choke up. You start to listen differently, not as a spectator, but as part of a temporary community bound by confession.
As the reading unfolds, you find yourself unexpectedly drawn in, paying attention not only to the words themselves, but to the way they are spoken. Stripped of power, fame, and PR polish, these words take on new meanings. When random people speak them, they can come across as absurd, hollow, or even heartbreaking and genuine. The performance asks: what happens when we remove status from an apology? Can tone, delivery, and intent make any acknowledgment register as authentic – or insincere?
A carefully crafted score heightens the work, as subtle sound effects and rhythmic pulses heighten particular instances, building a hypnotic rhythm that pulls the audience into this collective act of reckoning.
By the end, this experience is strangely moving. There’s humour and absurdity, yes, but there is a weight to hearing the people in the room attempt to make things right. It’s exhausting and cathartic, and a reminder that “sorry” is both universal and endlessly complicated.”
