Less successful is the parade of random children intermittently brought from backstage for a fleeting moment with their hero. Similarly, Dosanjh too often addresses only the fans clustered around his catwalk rather than the 30,000 in the cheap(er) seats.
Not that those 30,000 seemed to mind. The energy from the stage was amplified by the multigenerational audience singing and, apart from a few weary dadus and nanus – papas and nannas – standing from start to finish.
Spectacular staging: Diljit Dosanjh. Credit: Aditya Thakur
Certainly this reviewer has never encountered a stadium crowd so fragrant, so finely turned out, and so proud. When Dosanjh rolls out his hit G.O.A.T., the subject matter is as much apna Panjab (our Punjab) as it is the performer – pride not only in how far he has come but in where he began.
By the end of the show even the most Anglo of the audience find themselves singing — and wishing — along: main hoon Panjab (I am Punjab).
MUSICAL
PHAR LAP: THE ELECTRO-SWING MUSICAL
Hayes Theatre, October 23, until November 22
Reviewed by HARRIET CUNNINGHAM
★★★★★
We’re a week shy of the race that stops the nation and, in a world where news just keeps getting worse, we need something, anything, to make us smile. Enter Phar Lap, a new musical written by Steven Kramer and staged with chaotic joy by Sheridan Harbridge. The timing could not be better.
We know the story: an Australian racehorse trainer takes a chance on a gangly thoroughbred from New Zealand with a promising pedigree. The horse loses its first races but then, with all the drive of the 100-1 underdog, emerges as the greatest racehorse of the century. Against a backdrop of sharemarket chaos and grinding unemployment, Phar Lap gives the nation a reason to cheer.
Lincoln Elliot and Joel Granger in Phar Lap.Credit: John McCrae
It’s the classic rags-to-riches story, perfect for an uplifting musical, except for one thing: how do you do the horses? The answer: by letting imaginations run wild. Phar Lap and his horsey mates all talk, sing, and dance, tap, jazz, ballet and modern.
The stage is bounded by stable doors and straw bales (set by Hailley Hunt), while zany costumes (Mason Browne) embrace 1920s racecourse chic. The races come to life in the faces of the crowd and breathless commentary from silver-tongued Manon Gunderson Briggs. As for the climactic moments in Phar Lap’s track career, the thunder of hooves becomes inspiration for a series of hilarious dance-offs (choreography by Ellen Simpson).
Then, of course, there are the horse gags. Kramer corrals every pun with impish delight, from Phar Lap’s stable mates 1-1 and 2-2 (1-1 was a racehorse, 2-2 was 1 2) to the touchy subject of the glue factory. Justin Smith as trainer Harry Telford and Nat Jobe (as owner David Davis) revel in the quickfire back chat, while Shay Debney (jockey Jim Pike) and Amy Hack (Madame X) do silly voices that never stop being funny. It’s barmy, it’s whip smart clever and it’s all delivered with thrilling conviction.
The cast of Phar Lap in full flight. Credit: John McCrae
I challenge anyone not to fall in love with Joel Granger in his role as Phar Lap. He arrives on stage as a Kiwi ingenue, anxious to please but happy to stay in second place. Then, galvanised by a new jockey with an erotic bent – leather, anyone? – he turns into a champion, radiating Phar Lap’s inner fire. All this is conveyed with some high-speed hoofing (sorry) and suitably big-hearted (sorry, again) ballads.
The score – a pre-record by a crack music team delivered and, with flawless sound production (Liam Roche) – is inspired by 1920s swing, full of blarey trumpets and driving rhythms. There’s barely space for sentimentality, but Harry and Phar Lap’s duet We’ll Stick Together Like Glue provides a special little moment.
Steve Kramer has created a thing of beauty. Phar Lap is everything you’d expect from the Hayes – irreverent, funny, slightly chaotic – but the elegant story-telling, lovable characters and electric performances take it to the next level. No long faces here.
JAZZ
HIROMI featuring PUBLIQUARTET
City Recital Hall, October 24, festival until November 2
Reviewed by SHAMIM RAZAVI
★★★★
This year’s Sydney International Women’s Jazz Festival promises not only to thrill crowds but also to educate them on the expanding boundaries of the genre, if its opening night’s pairing of Hiromi’s jazz piano with the classical chops of New York’s PUBLIQuartet is anything to go by.
Hiromi plays in both senses of the word – her virtuosic ability is never in question but she engages with her instrument not with reverence but as an extension of her restless, playful character. From her opening solo, with its nimble echoes of Blue Rondo à la Turk, to her rolling, repeating cadenzas – often standing up and reaching into the piano to pluck or buzz the strings – Hiromi takes technical accomplishment and literally jazzes it up.
Jazz pianist Hiromi in action.Credit: Shane Rozario
That use of the piano’s full capabilities beyond the keyboard, paired with the audible sighs and inhalations that punctuate her phrasing, recalls Keith Jarrett’s total-body immersion in the music, though Hiromi’s version feels more exuberant than his solemnity. The collaboration with PUBLIQuartet builds on that same physical energy: their classical discipline tempers her improvisational daring, each shaping the other in real time.
The night’s centrepiece was Hiromi’s COVID-composition Silver Lining Suite, whose four movements follow our collective journey from Isolation to, or perhaps through, Fortitude. It is a work that depends on, and allows, the Quartet to really shine.
Jannina Norpoth’s chopping, deliberately niggling violin and Hamilton Berry’s mournful cello lines evoke the seemingly endless stasis we all endured, while Hiromi’s piano captures those flashes of unexpected joy among our sadness. Written in lockdown, it finds added meaning when performed in this sold-out, rafters-packed hall.
It was followed by a breezier, but no less clever, reading of Blackbird. Picking up on the Beatles’ acknowledgement that their song was inspired by Bach’s Bourrée in E minor, Hiromi seamlessly spliced in lines of Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring, the combination epitomising the night’s jazz-classical conversation with humour and grace.
Hiromi solo can stray into weightlessness; with PUBLIQuartet beside her, she finds just enough gravity to turn exuberance into substance.
MUSIC
SAMARA JOY
Richard Bonynge Concert Hall, October 23
Reviewed by JOHN SHAND
★★★★
Samara Joy came out and told us that although she was recovering from a cold, she’d rather sing a few notes for us than none. Compromised she was, in range, volume and breath control. She avoided introducing songs or band members, and only performed for 45 minutes rather than the scheduled 90. This, perhaps, was the peril of long-haul flights when your instrument is your voice.
Samara Joy.Credit: AB+DM
The American’s misfortune makes the concert tricky to review. From what I’d heard on record and YouTube, Joy is a candidate for being the most complete jazz singer since Sarah Vaughan. But if we couldn’t experience the full glory of her tone and range, we could still relish her phrasing, notably on the bittersweet A Beautiful Friendship, which also gave hints of her ingenuity and astuteness in embellishing a melody. On this basis, she’d be frightening when fully well.
A testament to her status is that she brought a septet all the way to Australia: four horns, piano, bass and drums. It was fascinating, though, to hear this take on jazz the night after the Bill Frisell Trio. Where the latter was all about collective creativity while still having effortless precision, Joy’s band put a premium on being well-drilled.
That is not intended as a criticism, as to play such challenging and inventive arrangements (which I believe come from within the band, but with Joy unable to tell us, I can’t be sure) so consummately demands exemplary musicianship. Curiously, many of the new wave of exceptional jazz singers draw heavily on pre-1960s jazz (as Wynton Marsalis has prescribed for decades), rather than revitalising the idiom, which is what their idols did.
As good as trumpeter Jason Charos, tenor saxophonist Kendric McCallister and alto saxophonist David Mason were, trombonist Donavan Austin stood out, starting his solo on A Beautiful Friendship with a soft, marshmallow-sweet sound, and using it to play with a 1930s mellifluousness. Bassist Paul Sikivie, drummer Evan Sherman and especially the pianist Connor Rohrer, meanwhile, made for a propulsive engine room.
Given Joy’s constraints, I actually derived more pleasure from the opening set by local singer Kristin Berardi and bassist Sam Anning. With Berardi now based in Switzerland, they hadn’t played together for some time, and, presumably at short notice, found themselves obliged to perform for an hour rather than 30 minutes to flesh out the event.
It’s a brave format for both parties, with no chord instrument or drummer providing sonic shelter, and yet I’ve never heard either sound better – and Berardi’s as good a singer and Anning as good a bassist as Australia’s produced. The songs they played, whether originals or standards, were actually enhanced by being stripped down in this fashion. The pair improvised and interacted with unbounded flair, good humour and – the sacred element missing from too much jazz – passion.
Samara Joy also plays the City Recital Hall on October 24.
DANCE
SYDNEY DANCE COMPANY: CONTINUUM
Roslyn Packer Theatre, October 22, until November 1
Reviewed by CHANTAL NGUYEN
★★★★½
A strong triple bill is greater than the sum of its parts. Sydney Dance Company’s Continuum hits that high note, featuring an exciting line-up of heavyweights: Stephen Page, William Barton, Rafael Bonachela, and the up-and-coming Tra Mi Dinh. Their artistic voices are distinct in style, but the gorgeous commonality is that each is artistically mature and can evoke a sophisticated, satisfying artistic vision.
First off the ranks is a dance by the home team: artistic director Rafael Bonachela’s Spell. It’s structured into five chapters, “each a vivid ‘spell’ that creates dance alchemy”, Bonachela explains.
A scene from the dance work Spell, showing as part of the Sydney Dance Company show Continuum.Credit: Daniel Boud
While the through-line between each segment is not always clear, the spinning athleticism of Bonachela’s aesthetic and SDC’s god-like dancers never disappoint.
A highlight is the last ‘spell’, a duet for a male and female dancer, performed in a towering cone of red light and mist (Damien Cooper’s lighting and Kelsey Lee’s set). Visually striking, it also packs a searing emotional punch.
A scene from Somewhere between ten and fourteen.Credit: Daniel Boud
Next comes Tra Mi Dinh’s Somewhere between ten and fourteen, an exploration of the period between day and night, with the dancers dressed in a spectrum of dreamy, saturated blue shades (Aleisa Jelbart’s costumes).
First seen in SDC’s 2023 New Breed season, Dinh has reworked this rendition for a larger ensemble. The result is intelligent and polished, with the choreography transitioning seamlessly between a robust, pulsing energy danced in sneakers and smooth, spinning sequences danced barefoot.
A scene from the dance work Unungkati Yantatja – one with the other, a multidisciplinary collaboration between choreographer Stephen Page and leading yidaki (or didgeridoo) player William Barton. Credit: Daniel Boud
The evening peaks with a soaring First Nations meditation on the spirit of creation breath: Unungkati Yantatja – one with the other, a multidisciplinary collaboration between choreographer Stephen Page and leading yidaki (or didgeridoo) player William Barton, who composed the music and performs centre stage along with the classical new music artists of the Omega Ensemble.
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Barton’s musicality and mere stage presence is nothing short of magnetic. A towering figure in a feathery cloak (Jennifer Irwin’s magnificent costuming), his didgeridoo playing speaks with the command of an ancient, evocative voice talking from the edge of the human world. And when singing, he seems to be calling the very dancing into being. The combination – on just one stage – of Barton’s presence, Page’s masterful choreographic instincts, and the artistic excellence of the SDC dancers and Omega Ensemble is almost an embarrassment of riches.
THEATRE
Fly Girl
Ensemble Theatre, October 22, until November 22
Reviewed by HARRIET CUNNINGHAM
★★★★½
Two air hostesses, dressed in orange slacks and matching hats, unroll a line of tape across the stage of the Ensemble Theatre. It’s the line that marks the limits of where a woman can go in 1970s Australia.
Fly Girl is the story of Deborah Lawrie, the first woman in Australia to become a commercial airline pilot. It’s a sprawling tale, part memoir, part courtroom drama, about the pitched battle between a talented 25-year-old pilot who happens to be a woman, and the rusted-on prejudice of pioneering businessman Sir Reg Ansett.
Genevieve Hegney and Catherine Moore in Fly Girl.Credit: Prudence Upton
In 1976 Lawrie, who has her first flying lesson at 15 and has 1600 flying hours under her belt, applies to join the pilot training program at Ansett. Despite impressing selectors at two interviews and passing the psychological test with flying colours, Lawrie is rejected. In 1978 she takes her case to the newly established Victorian Equal Opportunity Board and becomes the complainant in the Australia’s first sex discrimination in employment case.
Spoiler alert: she wins. But not without an ugly fight.
Playwrights Genevieve Hegney and Catherine Moore bring this epic tale to the Ensemble stage with humour, joy and just the right amount of bite. The action moves fast, in short scenes, cutting cinematically between Lawrie’s home and family, the control tower, the flying school, the courtroom and the economy cabin of a domestic flight. An airport flicker board suspended above the stage keeps track of where and when we are.
Genevieve Hegney, Alex Kirwan, Cleo Meinck and Emma Palmer in Fly Girl at the Ensemble Theatre. Credit: Prudence Upton
Everything else – including over 50 characters – is up to the cast of five, directed with ingenuity by Janine Watson, aided by a stirring soundtrack (Daniel Herten) and a treasure trove of 1970s costumes (Grace Deacon).
Sex is delightfully irrelevant: Alex Kirwan doubles as Lawrie’s father, then Lawrie’s husband, but also dons a red wig and orange slacks to become Helen, the tearful 27-year-old Ansett hostie on her last flight before she ages out of the job.
Meanwhile, and with delicious irony, Genevieve Hegney switches between a strutting Reg Ansett, a pregnant and therefore unemployed solicitor, and TV reporter Pamela Graham. Catherine Moore juggles hats, moustaches and lunch trays with aplomb and Emma Palmer is richly comedic as barrister John Dwyer. Through this all, newcomer Cleo Meinck creates a touching portrayal of the young Lawrie, passionate about flying and buffeted by prejudice.
Fly Girl is a commission from Ensemble Theatre artistic director Mark Kilmurry who, after the success of How to Plot a Hit in Two Days, continues to tap the rich vein of nostalgia for iconic cultural moments.
The script leans into the gloriously unselfconscious sexism of 1970s Australia, where women become “old boilers” after 21 and menstruation is a mental illness. But period observations aren’t just for laughs: the production builds in power across the second act, and as Lawrie’s fight plays out in court, we see the ripples of change coming for traditional female roles.
THEATRE
SHIRLEY VALENTINE
Theatre Royal, October 22, until October 26
★★★
Shirley Valentine is in a rut. She’s not so much climbing the walls as talking to them.
Her claustrophobic kitchen with its florid wallpaper can barely contain the big personality that is Natalie Bassingthwaighte’s Shirley Valentine, a woman straining to break free.
Natalie Bassingthwaighte as Shirley Valentine. Credit: Brett Boardman
Within her cramped confines, and lubricated by a glass or three of riesling, the middle-aged Liverpool housewife overshares and wisecracks about her life, marriage, kids and clitoris.
What happened to the adventurous Shirley Valentine she used to be before she became Mrs Joe Bradshaw? Will she have the guts to go to Greece for a holiday with the friend who has bought her a ticket? The answers are probably best known to audiences through the popular 1989 film adaptation with Pauline Collins.
Bassingthwaighte is a firecracker of a Shirley in this one-woman touring show. She’s funny, capricious and insightful as she navigates her character’s transformation and the shifts from humour to pathos and back again.
I saw the first London season of Willy Russell’s play in 1988. It was thrilling to see a story rooted in my home city that put the hopes and dreams of a mature working-class woman centre stage. She felt like our mothers, aunts, neighbours.
Shirley’s candour and wit felt as innovative then as Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Fleabag (which started life as a play) did more recently.
What strikes me seeing the play again after so long is how, beneath the laughs – and there are many – are shards of a darker tale of coercive control than I recall.
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It’s this aspect that director Lee Lewis has teased out in her thoughtful production. We see Shirley’s jocular demeanour turn twitchy and anxious as she hears Joe arriving home. Her line about being beaten and battered is delivered with sufficient ambiguity to leave you questioning whether she’s not merely talking metaphorically. And when Shirley says she knows she’ll pay for running away to Greece when she returns, the sense of menace is inescapable.
It’s clear that Shirley’s flagging confidence didn’t begin – or end – with marriage to her controlling husband, who expects his egg and chips on a plate the moment he walks through the door.
There was the headmistress who predicted Shirley would never go far. There’s the grown-up daughter who returns home expecting Shirley to again tend her every need.
The odds have long been stacked against Shirley.
The polymath Russell (he’s also a musician, painter and former hairdresser) threads lively tales of other women in Shirley’s life, including of her neighbour Gillian, one of several minor character Bassingthwaighte convincingly creates.
The Liverpool accent wobbles, and at more than two hours the pieces sags in the run-up to interval.
The shorter second half is set in Greece, in which Simone Romaniuk’s set uses the entire stage, and is sunnier in tone and appearance.
Nearly four decades on, a stay-at-home housewife is a less common figure than she once was, and jetting off to Greece a lot less daring. Nonetheless, it’s impossible not to cheer as this spirited Shirley discovers the world beyond her walls.
MUSIC
BILL FRISELL TRIO
City Recital Hall, October 22
Reviewed by JOHN SHAND
★★★★½
There are nights in the Blue Mountains when you gaze at the night sky with all the wonder of a child’s eyes. Hearing the Bill Frisell Trio is like that.
A deep sense of mystery pervades the music, with notes from Frisell’s guitar flaring, glittering and then fading, to be replaced by fresh improbabilities.
Jazz guitarist Bill Frisell (centre) with the other members of his trio, drummer Rudy Royston (right) and bassist Thomas Morgan (left). Credit: Matthew Septimus
Rudy Royston’s drumming is no less mysterious. Few people have played the instrument with a musicality so complete that he could solo with brushes on a slow ballad, and have at least as much of substance and relevance to say as Frisell or that master of understatement, bassist Thomas Morgan.
Many others, from Pharoah Sanders all the way to Arvo Part, have made mysterious music, but few, aside from the late trumpeter Lester Bowie, combined that quality with such goofy playfulness. There were times during this concert when it was like watching three children utterly absorbed in the same sandpit.
This is among the great jazz bands in its combination of personalities, sounds, ideas and interaction. They second-guess and surprise each other in equal measure, while often playing with candlelit intimacy, as if we’re eavesdropping on conversations that are no less private for being musical.
There’s astonishing detail in the crafting of sounds and precision in the blending of them. Whereas last time they were here, in 2019, they played songs from the screen-music-oriented When You Wish upon a Star (which tended to be rowdier and larger than life), here, concentrating on material from the Valentine album, they were closer to the art of the miniaturist, and the exceptional sound mixing allowed you to catch the infinite subtleties emanating from all three instruments.
They opened with flurries of arrhythmic notes, that, like random filings suddenly being attracted to a magnet, solidified into a blues: Frisell’s Thelonious Monk-influenced title track from Valentine. His playing was typically idiosyncratic in its sweet and sour harmonies, while Royston had the drums and cymbals singing, and Morgan growled and prowled around the lurching, swinging groove with the minimum of notes.
The compositions segued into one another, whether blurring where one stopped and another started, or with bold leaps of contrast. The commonality was seemingly infinite options, from the gentleness and naivety of a nursery rhyme, to howling guitar against a jolting backbeat. Always the music was in flux – ranging all the way to Johnny Mercer’s I’m an Old Cowhand (from the Rio Grande), which they played with contagious fun. But, as with Burt Bacharach’s What the World Needs Now Is Love, there was no hint of satire; rather a celebration of these songs’ innate beauty, which somehow came into sharper focus without the distraction of lyrics.
Constants were Frisell’s marriage of childlike innocence and sonic sophistication, Royston’s superlative command of timbre and dynamics, and Morgans’s ability to make each note precious and telling. A dream gig.
MUSIC
Brahms: A German Requiem
Sydney Philharmonia Festival Chorus, Sydney Youth Orchestra
Opera House Concert Hall, October 22
Reviewed by PETER McCALLUM
★★★
Sydney Philharmonia Festival Chorus with the Sydney Youth Orchestra under conductor Brett Weymark presented Brahms’ A German Requiem with a large choir of close to 300 singers, and an orchestra of just over 70, placing it in the “monster” performance tradition of English choral societies, popularised by large-scale performances of Handel’s Messiah.
This enables a large number of people to experience the unique thrill of performing great music and in the stern unison climax of the second movement Denn alles Fleisch es ist wie Gras (For all flesh is as grass) the volume was stirring and impressive.
Soprano Cathy-Di Zhang.Credit:
In one sense this is in keeping with the universalist aspect of the work. Brahms, nervous the piece might be politicised and jingoized in the wake of the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 (which he opposed), once said he would be happy to call it a “Human” requiem and leave the word “German” out altogether.
At the same time, such a large, unwieldy force can struggle to articulate Brahms musical aims with the nuance on which his musical language is built. The chief disadvantages lay in the balance, with under-strength tenor and bass sections outnumbered two to one by the sopranos and altos, and in the lack of shaping of the musical lines that tended to be delivered without careful moulding of the melodic arc.
The first movement nevertheless unfolded with gentle reflectiveness. The strings under concertmasters Fiona Ziegler and Khang Mai, supported the chorale-like opening with transparency, the woodwind being slightly too strong at the close. In the third movement, Herr, lehre doch mich, baritone Samuel Dundas sang the solo part with rich, well-phrased lines and strong musical engagement, despite being placed with the wind players at the back of the orchestra, behind the strings.
Some of the detail in the closing choral fugue was swamped by the insistent low D on organ and bass instruments. For the soprano solo of the fifth movement Ihr habt nun Traurigkeit, soprano Cathy-Di Zhang articulated with penetrating clarity and warmth, while traversing the stage from the west to the eastern entrance doors.
Dundas brought the same musical energy and vividness to the first part of the sixth movement, Denn wir haben hie keine bleibende Statt. Though it suffered from the balance problems mentioned above, the closing choral fugue had moments of vivid impact.
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