(Belated) Sydney Festival Wrap-Up

Something of a nearly irrelevantly late post on the Sydney festival, and I apologise for that, offering pathetic excuses of University showings and preparing for Quarterbred’s Tiny Stadiums. But it was an enjoyable Sydney Festival for me, one where I managed to see a couple of things that tickled my fancy, and I know of a few other shows that friends saw and enjoyed, so I thought it would be a shame not to write about it.

Also, almost as a gentle reminder, I just received a Sydney Festival t-shirt in the mail.

Sydney Festival is a great time to not have much money. There are almost always things on that I want to see, and these things cost money. So one has to make some very tough decisions. I made it to four shows, and regrettably missed three, not to mention missing out on a lot of the free Domain action.

Hamlet

Thomas Ostermeier’s Hamlet, from the acclaimed German company Schaubühne, was the theatrical headliner of the festival. Big, fancy, foreign and cool. For me, Hamlet brought a standard that raises a lot of questions about Australian theatre. This level of theatre (not necessarily scale, but more the qualitative level) should be the rule, not the exception. There was a sharpness in this production, an immediacy and a thrilling sensation of theatre achieving great things, which I’ve only felt in a handful of shows (it’s quite easy to bring War of the Roses to mind). But perhaps I’m romanticising festival fare a bit too much. There was something to be said for the unshakeable feeling that this was a work that has now toured the world extensively; that the show itself was no longer the exciting challenge for the company that it may have been at the beginning - but does that matter to a new, Australian audience? Many of the moments of Lars stepping out of Hamlet to talk to the audience and make jokes, while done with an integrity that flowed through his entire performance, wore thin on me a little. And applause after jokes (in theatre and in stand-up) has always been a pet hate of mine. Perhaps I just felt slightly uncomfortable with how ‘cool’ the show was. And perhaps I am simply looking for things to criticise. Because I did think this show was fantastic.


Ruhe


A few days after Giselle, I saw Muziektheater Transparant’s Ruhe. After my initial excitement of Hamlet coming to Australia wore off, I started getting very excited about this show. And I was right, because this was my pick of the festival. This production was everything I wanted it to be, but I shall try and stop myself from waxing lyrical on it.
Ruhe is a combination of liedert by Schubert and Van Parys, and monologues drawn from interviews with ex-SS members taken in the 1960s. We enter University of Sydney’s Great Hall, which with its stained glass windows, huge organ and high ceiling is the perfect house for this show. Two hundred scattered, assorted wooden chairs for the audience form a giant circle pointing towards a small empty middle of the room. As we sit, eleven men stand on their chairs and begin to sing. Their voices are incredible, and on this Wednesday afternoon I find myself mesmerised by the sounds filling the building. Soon, a woman stands, and as the songs come to a close, begins to tell us of her childhood. She is dutch, and as a young girl, through completely normal and understandable circumstances became a member of the SS.
I am reminded on working on Talking to Terrorists with Mark Haslam last year. All the strengths of verbatim theatre are here; an easily relatable humanity and earnest desire to tell a story.
Both the performers, Han Kerckhoffs and Truus te Selle, are phenomenal. Real, honest, and fleshed out with a complexity and proficiency that honours the real life figures from whom the monologues have been formed.
Throughout the performance, there is a weight of history that I find tremendously interesting. It is serious, but not oppressively heavy as in the case that investigates subject material like this. The result was a liberation allowing insight into the people behind the history, culminating in the final song being performed next to a David Claerbout’s visual material, a haunting photo from the era with moving trees but statue-still people.
I cannot stress enough (though I did try not to) how beautiful, humbling and superbly crafted this piece of theatre was. Precisely what I wanted from my festival experience.

The Rest

I’ve already talked about Giselle, and Jenni has written of Six Characters (never have I wanted to leave a show at interval until that show). I wish I had seen Urban Theatre Project’s The Fence, I heard many good things about it and I had intended to find the time to make it. Similarly, apparently Oedipus Loves You was very interesting and I would have liked to have seen it. Finally, I missed out on Tempest: Without a Body and Fractured Again, both of which I read about after the event.

Did you see anything that we haven’t covered? Or maybe something we have? What did you think of it?

Giselle

Sydney Festival’s Giselle is a new interpretation of the romantic ballet brought to us by internation dance ensemble Fabulous Beast, heralded by director/choreographer Michael Keegan-Dolan. Giselle traditionally tells the story of a young girl dying because of the selfish men in her life, and this production sells itself as giving the ballet a line-dancing face lift. As it turns out, I guess I really like line dancing. There just was a whole lot of the show I didn’t like.

Designer Sophie Charalambous and Lighting Designer Adam Silverman have done a wonderful job of creating a series of stunning images. From preshow, where Giselle and a lone telegraph pole give sharp silhouettes against the back wall, I was consistently impressed by the clarity and effectiveness of the design. Similarly I thought the sound was great, if a tad repetitive by the end of the show. It belied an urgency and gravity that dwelled beneath the narrative.

The narrative itself, however, was abysmal. When Giselle’s father, the narrator, climbed atop the telegraph pole and began to introduce us to the characters and their relationships, I was irked, but permissive. Surely this part is just putting the story into the space so that the imagery does not need to rely on storytelling? And surely the childish and slapstick exchanges being carried out between the performers to match the narrator are just a bit of fun as we warm into the piece? Alas, no. The entire first half was a messy, indulgent, and most importantly unfunny acting out of a reworked Giselle story. It felt like the ensemble was working under a “show AND tell” mantra, as the narrator’s unnecessary intrusions were then played out for far too long, with all the dramatic integrity and comic maturity of a year nine camp skit. I was quite prepared for this show to be light-hearted and funny, but as Pat Dunn’s butcher ad went nearly as long as the painfully juvenile sex scene, I just felt embarrassed to be there.


It wasn’t all terrible. The scenes between Giselle and her mentally-ill brother w

ere very solid, mature pieces of drama. Similarly the tragedy of the mute and outcasted Giselle came across with a very earnest clarity at times, but unfortunately the rest of the story in all its irrelevance ruined these would-be effecting moments. The line dancing too was amazing, but there just wasn’t enough of it (particularly considering the show was marketed on that).

But then Giselle dies from an asthma attack brought on by shock. And something amazing happens. The performance becomes breathtakingly amazing. We move from an awful rendition of the story to phenomenally beautiful dance, music and images. The spirits in the graveyard thrown dust into the side-lit air, and weave themselves across the space and through each other with sublime movements and huge noose-like ropes, accompanied by the angelic voice of a male soprano. The lights and music frame the action with remarkable efficiency, setting the tone for this second half of the Giselle story. Giselle’s brother enters and is gracefully dispatched by the spirits. The same nearly happens to Giselle’s lover, but she steps in, and the two share a beautifully choreographed ballet sequence. I was entranced the entire time. The performance ends with Giselle’s lover stepping back as she returns to her grave at sunrise.

This show was possibly the most frustrating performance I have ever seen. I felt insulted and embarrassed for the first forty minutes, and then the end featured an absolutely beautiful sequence of images. I worry that this is typical Festival fare where the strengths are outweighed by pandering to an audience that just isn’t there. But even though the first half did nothing to serve the piece, the finale brought a depth of beauty that I am very glad I witnessed.

- Nathan