MUSICAL THEATRE<\/strong> Elvis didn\u2019t die. He was abducted by aliens, or so the conspiracy theory went. Clearly that fantasy represented the denial stage of collective grief, though you could be forgiven for a sneaking suspicion \u2013 between Baz Luhrmann\u2019s glossy, overstuffed biopic, and the world premiere of this slick jukebox musical in Melbourne \u2013 that the King is indeed living on Mars and has taken to beaming messages directly into the brains of Australian artists.<\/p>\n Rob Mallett takes us beyond Elvis impersonation in Elvis: A Musical Revolution..<\/span>Credit: <\/span>Daniel Boud<\/cite><\/p>\n You can be glad the creatives left their tin-foil hats off this time.<\/p>\n Elvis: A Musical Revolution<\/em> is, like Luhrmann\u2019s film, a rock\u2019n\u2019roll fever dream, but it doesn\u2019t cram so much into the frame and it\u2019s also the most classic form of jukebox musical. Fusing biography and discography from the era of actual jukeboxes, its closest relative is probably Jersey Boys<\/em>, the international smash hit based on the career of Frankie Valli.<\/p>\n Pinned to the legend\u2019s 1968 Christmas special, it begins and ends with Elvis at a crossroads. Under immense stress, the spectre of his decline foreshadowed, Elvis encounters the memory of boyhood to remind him of his roots.<\/p>\n Elvis Presley is at a crossroads in his life in Elvis: A Musical Revolution.<\/span>Credit: <\/span>Ken Leanfore<\/cite><\/p>\n What could\u2019ve been a corny device works like a charm. Portraying Elvis as a kid proves a poignant touchstone, and the formative influence of what were then known as \u201crace records\u201d is soulfully explored.<\/p>\n A young Elvis gets introduced to gospel music and the blues by kindly black folks (Charly Williams, Joti Gore, Jo-Anne Jackson, Zuleika Khan), a crucial step in developing the sound that made him famous, though the show doesn\u2019t shy from how the realities of the segregated South shaped his early career.<\/p>\n Rob Mallett takes us beyond Elvis impersonation.<\/p>\n The curled lip, trembling thigh and rockabilly quiff are all present and accounted for, but this charismatic incarnation stitches brilliant artist into flawed human being, unfurling from a mamma\u2019s boy prone to stage-fright into the overworked superstar whose music and image conquered the globe.<\/p>\n A fast-paced episodic structure fillets the biography, focusing on a close relationship with his mother Gladys (Noni McCallum), a co-dependent one with manager Colonel Parker (Ian Stenlake) and the romance with Priscilla (Annie Chiswell).<\/p>\n A brilliant artist and flawed human being: Rob Mallett as Elvis and Annie Chiswell as Priscilla in Elvis – A Musical Revolution.<\/span>Credit: <\/span>Credit: Ken Leanfore_<\/cite><\/p>\n There\u2019s too much good material to summarise. Highlights include a comic sequence mocking Elvis\u2019s starring role in increasingly terrible Hollywood movies, a show-stopping rendition of Blue Suede Shoes<\/em> during army service, snapshots of camaraderie with and antagonism towards fellow musicians.<\/p>\n Despite a drift towards soap opera in the second act, there\u2019s no dull moment. Director Alister Smith keeps it remarkably swift and tight, and the performers dial the energy up to eleven.<\/p>\n With vibrant period choreography and costume, a pitch-perfect balance of conversation and action, and a huge playlist of songs, this new jukebox musical is primed to delight Elvis fans. MUSICAL THEATRE<\/strong> Dust off your sequined jumpsuit and knee-high boots and revisit those phenomenally successful ABBA hits that rocked the \u201970s. Mamma Mia! The Musical<\/em> is back, and the stars remain Benny Andersson and Bjorn Ulvaeus\u2019s songs.<\/p>\n Deone Zanotto, Elise McCann and Bianca Bruce in Mamma Mia! The Musical <\/span>Credit: <\/span>David Hooley<\/cite><\/p>\n Catherine Johnson\u2019s narrative focuses on former wild-child Donna (Elise McCann), who now runs a taverna on a Greek island. Her daughter, Sophie (Sarah Krndija), is marrying Sky (Lewis Francis) at the ripe, old age of 20 \u2013 far too early according to her \u201970s feminist single mother.<\/p>\n Wedding preparations take a dizzying turn when \u2013 unbeknown to her mother \u2013 Sophie invites three of mum\u2019s past lovers to the wedding: Sam (Martin Crewes), Harry (Drew Livingston) and Bill (Tim Wright), in the belief that one is her dad.<\/p>\n In Mamma Mia! wedding preparations take a dizzying turn when, unbeknown to her mother, Sophie invites three of mum\u2019s past lovers.<\/span>Credit: <\/span>David Hooley<\/cite><\/p>\n The lyrics of ABBA\u2019s memorable, singable songs tell stories about love found, love lost and life\u2019s other hiccups, all of which make them eminently suited to musical theatre. The tissue-thin narrative is contrived to incorporate a repertoire of 20+ tunes and the lyrics effectively act as dialogue, illuminating characters, revealing their inner lives and relationships, and advancing the story. In contrast, much of the unsung dialogue is uninspired or trite and works best when threaded into songs or underscored by music.<\/p>\n McCann has fine vocal technique, a clear tone and impeccable control. Her Donna is the heart of this production, shifting from cheerful confidence to tremulous anxiety and confusion. Her emotional meltdown triggers a frantic, funny rendition of Mamma Mia<\/em>, and her The Winner Takes It All<\/em> is impassioned and moving.<\/p>\n Crewes\u2019 voice has power and warmth; his duet of SOS<\/em> with McCann is a show highlight, and he transforms Knowing Me, Knowing You<\/em> into a poignant ballad about Sam\u2019s divorce.<\/p>\n Donna and her pals, naughty Rosie (Bianca Bruce) and saucy Tanya (Deone Zanotto), revive their \u201970s girl group, donning glittering blue, ABBA-lookalike jumpsuits for a super version of Super Trouper<\/em>. As Sophie, Krndija is pert and effervescent with a sweet vocal tone, but her voice occasionally lacks control, while Zanotto\u2019s audacious, sultry Does Your Mother Know<\/em> is a thrilling showstopper.<\/p>\n L-R: Kadesa Honeyhill, Sarah Krndija, Nina Carmen.<\/span>Credit: <\/span>Getty Images, James D Morgan<\/cite><\/p>\n Gary Young\u2019s production is exuberant, with a tight, sassy band and a spirited, boisterous chorus performing Tom Hodgson\u2019s energetic choreography that pulsates with dance party rhythms.<\/p>\n ABBA\u2019s hits keep coming, and, once the narrative is complete, the temperature rises for a rousing finale comprising Mamma Mia<\/em>, Dancing Queen<\/em> and Waterloo<\/em> that has the enthusiastic crowd dancing in their seats.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s face it: ABBA\u2019s melodies get the crowd singing, clapping and cheering, so despite its flaws, Mamma Mia! The Musical<\/em> is failsafe. MUSIC<\/strong> There\u2019s something wonderfully wholesome about US indie rockers Weezer. Their songs won over a generation of \u201990s grunge kids, but it\u2019s clear from the turnout at John Cain Arena on a rainy Friday night that they haven\u2019t stopped pulling fans.<\/p>\n Much-loved indie rockers Weezer keep pulling in the crowds. <\/span>Credit: <\/span>Rick Clifford<\/cite><\/p>\n Two merch lines snake back at least 20 metres as 40-somethings, some with their kids, and a new wave of listeners in their 20s queue for tees with the iconic W logo.<\/p>\n After a hit-filled set by fellow \u201990s-era band Regurgitator, who bounced on the stage wearing nun costumes, the near sell-out crowd is ready to rock some more.<\/p>\n My Name is Jonas<\/em>, a cult favourite, is a strong opener for the Australian leg of the Indie Rock Road Trip tour.<\/p>\n With his black-rimmed glasses and shaggy hair, lead singer Rivers Cuomo is the lovable rock equivalent of Marty McFly. He rips through guitar solos, jogs up and down the stage and gets the crowd clapping along to the band\u2019s trademark nerd-rock.<\/p>\n Weezer\u2019s Rivers Cuomo performs at John Cain Arena on Friday night.<\/span>Credit: <\/span>Rick Clifford<\/cite><\/p>\n During In the Garage<\/em> \u2013 an ode to a safe haven with Kiss posters on the wall \u2013 Cuomo sings, \u201cI\u2019ve got Ace Frehley, I\u2019ve got Peter Criss, waiting there for me, yes, I do\u201d. Afterwards, he excitedly tells the Melbourne audience that Weezer will be supporting Kiss in Sydney the following night.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a dream come true for me,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n Despite touring across the US and Canada, performing more than 30 shows since June, Weezer have plenty of juice in the tank. It\u2019s hit after hit, mostly from The Blue Album<\/em>, the band\u2019s 1994 debut album.<\/p>\n After a brief encore, the show wraps with Buddy Holly<\/em> \u2013 a song that endeared the band to fans more than 30 years ago with its upbeat rock as much as the Spike Jonze-directed music video filmed on the set of Happy Days.<\/em> THEATRE<\/strong> Twelfth Night<\/em> is an evergreen gender bender; Bell Shakespeare productions over the decades have felt unusually attuned to the zeitgeist. John Bell himself blazed a trail for a distinctively Australian style of Shakespearean performance, skewering histrionic pretension as the haughtiest of Malvolios, while director Lee Lewis took a graver and gentler approach to the play, transforming it into a memento mori, a quietly cathartic comedy risen from the ashes of the Black Saturday bushfires.<\/p>\n The latest production of Twelfth Night by Bell Shakespeare offers a fresh and enjoyable interpretation.<\/span>Credit: <\/span>Brett Boardman<\/cite><\/p>\n This latest national tour offers a fresh and enjoyable interpretation, with cross-gendered casting that leans into the 21st-century focus on gender and sexuality, showing just how mutable and diverse the experience of those things can be.<\/p>\n Director Heather Fairbairn knows this isn\u2019t a radical idea. Shakespeare has a protean, sometimes contradictory perspective \u2013 he entangles elements of gender suspender, defender, extender and upender \u2013 and Fairbairn reaches back into history, seeking a contemporary dramaturgical analogue to the playful artifice of Elizabethan performance.<\/p>\n Here, shipwrecked fraternal twins Viola and Sebastian are gender-flipped to disorienting effect. Isabel Burton first appears as Viola, but when she cross-dresses as a boy, Alfie Gledhill takes over, with Burton reverting to the role of Sebastian. The romantic confusions that follow are a knot too queer to untie.<\/p>\n It\u2019s no coincidence that the names of their paramours, Orsino and Olivia, begin with \u201cO\u201d. Garth Holcombe and Ursula Mills play them as empty, comically infatuated vessels, leaving the balance of interest and sympathy in the shenanigans of their subordinates.<\/p>\n Following in the footsteps of Tamsin Greig (who first played Malvolia as a woman for the National Theatre in London), Jane Montgomery Griffiths gives an extraordinary performance. She\u2019s a prim stickler, a lesbian appointed to serve a mistress who has literally abjured the company of men.<\/p>\n The design of Twelfth Night might be static in the first half but blossoms in the second.<\/span>Credit: <\/span>Brett Boardman<\/cite><\/p>\n Gendered violence infects the confrontation with Sir Toby (Keith Agius), who drunkenly gropes Malvolia, leading her to snap at the servant Maria (Amy Hack). The sharp cascade of abuse sparks a vengeful prank \u2013 a betrayal worse for the absence of a love (the courtship between Maria and Sir Toby has been excised) to explain it, and the abject cruelty of Malvolia\u2019s fate stops the comedy in its tracks.<\/p>\n Though emphatic about the extent of Sir Toby\u2019s alcoholism and disorder, the male clowning still entertains. A kilted Agius is as charming as he is alarming, and Mike Howlett brings a precise and likeable haplessness to the follies of Sir Andrew.<\/p>\n Another drawcard is Sarah Blasko\u2019s music. Her songs achieve a haunting and ethereal melancholy. They\u2019re sung in an exquisite, almost epicene register by Tomas Kantor, whose vampy, cabaret-style Feste seems to hover charismatically between feminine and masculine worlds.<\/p>\n The design might be static in the first half but blossoms in the second, and the eye doesn\u2019t need constant distraction in the presence of such a clever and imaginative engagement with the text. Twelfth Night is touring to Geelong Arts Centre, Oct 5-7; Canberra Theatre Centre, Oct 13-21; Sydney Opera House, Oct 24-Nov 19.<\/em><\/p>\n MUSIC<\/strong> In a truly ebullient start to its first Australian tour in six years, the Academy of St Martin in the Fields left no doubt it remains a uniquely compelling force in a crowded field of fine chamber orchestras, especially under the dynamic leadership of violin virtuoso Joshua Bell.<\/p>\n The Academy of St Martin in the Fields left no doubt it remains a uniquely compelling force in a crowded field of fine chamber orchestras.<\/span>Credit: <\/span>Laura Manariti<\/cite><\/p>\n On paper its first program seemed highly conventional: Mozart\u2019s Overture to The Marriage of Figaro<\/em> and Symphony No. 40 in G minor<\/em> interleaved with Beethoven\u2019s Violin Concerto<\/em>. However, the execution of these standard works was anything but routine.<\/p>\n Leaping to life with incredible verve, the overture pulsed with joyous rhythmic energy, born of incisive attack and well-considered articulation. The orchestra\u2019s prodigious weight of sound, coloured by fine winds, was full but not forced, underlining the music\u2019s vibrant sense of occasion.<\/p>\n This immediacy of sound lent profound emotional impetus to Bell\u2019s powerful account of the Beethoven concerto. Maintaining the dramatic tension of the opening allegro throughout, a dazzling cadenza by Bell himself brought the movement\u2019s titanic struggle to an exciting close. A contrasting air of quiet recollection characterised the central larghetto, eliciting beguiling soft playing, before the rondo finale established a sense of infectious joy, capped by yet another bravura solo display.<\/p>\n The orchestra\u2019s prodigious weight of sound, coloured by fine winds, was full but not forced.<\/span>Credit: <\/span>Laura Manariti<\/cite><\/p>\n Bell and the orchestra captured the fevered opening mood of the symphony well, shaping its lines with admirable flexibility, a trait that also benefitted the flowing andante and ensuing menuetto. A sharply etched finale, with excellent contributions from Fiona Cross on clarinet, once again saw the orchestra\u2019s evident pleasure in making music together paying enormous artistic dividends.<\/p>\n An encore \u2013 the waltz from Tchaikovsky\u2019s Serenade for Strings<\/em> \u2013 provided an elegant moment of decompression after the intensity of the main program.<\/p>\n After such a memorable and immersive musical experience, it was no wonder the capacity audience offered the players a rapturous ovation. MUSIC<\/strong> Tems struts beneath orange flashing lights. The Nigerian R&B star is performing live at the Forum as part of her debut Australian tour.<\/p>\n Tems performs at the Forum.<\/span>Credit: <\/span>Martin Philbey<\/cite><\/p>\n She loops around her bouncing back-up dancers, as her white scarf tornados around her. \u201cI said five in the morning, wake up to fight for my earnings.\u201d Raising one hand in the air, she sings, \u201cI really need, I really need time now, I really need, I need a free mind now.\u201d<\/p>\n Tems\u2019 loyal fans haven\u2019t stopped swaying to the gently ebbing groove, hanging on her every word. They call out to her, shouting, \u201cThe Queen of Afrobeats!\u201d \u2013 a Nigerian music genre that brings west African music together with American funk, jazz and soul.<\/p>\n In February, the 28-year-old musician picked up her first Grammy Award. She has collaborated with the likes of Drake, Rihanna and Beyonc\u00e9.<\/p>\n Tems\u2019 performance was fierce, nostalgic and warm.<\/span>Credit: <\/span>Martin Philbey<\/cite><\/p>\n On stage, west African drum rhythms underscore her fierce presence while her nostalgic and warm R&B chords imbue the room with a deep sense of soul.<\/p>\n In interviews, Tems says her debut EP, Broken Ears<\/em>, was a response to toxic relationships and depression. In concert, she lays her broken feelings bare in tones that aren\u2019t alarming but are accessible. As the crowd lose themselves in dance, healing by way of sharing in the emotional soundscape becomes something really cathartic.<\/p>\n
Elvis: A Musical Revolution \u2605\u2605\u2605\u2605<\/strong>
Athenaeum Theatre, from October 6<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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Reviewed by Cameron Woodhead<\/em><\/p>\n
Mamma Mia! The Musical \u2605\u2605\u2605<\/strong>
Princess Theatre, until 10 December<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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Reviewed by Kate Herbert<\/em><\/p>\n
Weezer | Indie Rock Road Trip \u2605\u2605\u2605\u2605\u2605<\/strong>
John Cain Arena, October 6<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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Reviewed by Kate Jones.<\/em><\/p>\n
Twelfth Night \u2605\u2605\u2605\u2605<\/strong>
Bell Shakespeare, Monash Performing Arts Centre, October 3<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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Reviewed by Cameron Woodhead<\/em><\/p>\n
Academy of St Martin in the Fields with Joshua Bell \u2605\u2605\u2605\u2605\u2605<\/strong>
Melbourne Recital Centre, October 4<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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Reviewed by Tony Way<\/em><\/p>\n
Tems \u2605\u2605\u2605\u2605 <\/strong>
Forum Theatre, October 3<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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