Adelaide Festival
\nMusic Theatre<\/p>\n
O dream of joy this departure is indeed, a spellbinding voyage through sight and sound<\/p>\n
Rime of the Ancient Mariner
\nThe Tiger Lillies.
\nHer Majesty\u2019s Theatre , 58 Grote Street.
\nDuration 1 hours 30 minutes
\nMarch 12. Tickets $ 30 – $ 79
\nBookings : BASS 131 246 or adelaidefestival.com.au
\nUntil March 14.<\/p>\n
One of the great narrative poems in English literature, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner<\/i>, written in 1797 by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, is a gripping tale of misadventure and doom. It is a nightmare life-in-death account of a sailor, who after impulsively shooting an albatross, brings supernatural vengeance on his ship and crew. The tribulations of the mariner are like a voyage to hell and he lives only to penitentially repeat his tale.<\/p>\n
UK group The Tiger Lillies, along with animator and photographer, Mark Holthusen, have not just adapted Coleridge\u2019s poem, they have keelhauled it. The result is a mind-bending ninety minutes of visual and musical phantasmagoria. Led by songwriter and vocalist Martyn Jacques on accordion and piano, fellow Tiger Lillies , Adrian Stout (on contra bass, theremin and musical saw) and percussionist Mike Pickering, navigate a seamless, sometimes relentless, score that has the mordant detachment and bitter humour of Weimar cabaret. . <\/i><\/p>\n
Dressed in cream dungarees and cloth caps, the musicians, with garish white and rouge faces and black-ringed eyes, are like sinister clowns – especially Jacques, the baleful narrator. Singing in his snarling near-falsetto, he has replaced Coleridge\u2019s Wedding Guest with Brecht and Weill\u2019s Mack the Knife.<\/p>\n
The songs, accompanied by woozy theremin, jaunty accordion and high hat drum are a mix of styles \u2013 polka, ballad, shanty, swing, slow blues and funeral march – with echoes of Tom Waits, the Divine Comedy and even, that other boat song aficionado, Nick Cave. The three Albatross<\/i> songs are haunting, Water Water<\/i> is an eerie lament, and the monstrous visions of Palace by the Sea<\/i> are vivid. But not everything works \u2013 Hypocrites<\/i> is jarring, and Cabin Boys<\/i> needlessly casts the Mariner as depraved rather than, in the original, a man who suffers catastrophe for a single error of judgement. That said, Martyn Jacques\u2019 jagged lyrics are a bold departure from Coleridge\u2019s sonorous rhymes, retaining familiar fragments of the original but only fleetingly.<\/p>\n
In this production the main narrative is visual. Mark Holthusen\u2019s extraordinary design envelops the musicians with a huge projection screen behind them and a gauze curtain in front, on to which appears a continuous surge of images and apparitions.<\/p>\n
It is like a giant Victorian pop-up book with curly waves, ice floes, sailing ships and increasingly gargantuan sea serpents. The albatross is a rudimentary stringed marionette given pathos by its simplicity. Then Holthusen adds the most sophisticated digital photography to create wraith-like sailors, or the diaphanous Death Maiden with lace and streaming hair. This spellbinding combination of sight and sound holds us as surely as the Mariner\u2019s own telling.<\/p>\n
Murray Bramwell<\/p>\n
Published as \u201cO dream of joy this departure is indeed a spellbinding voyage through sight and sound\u201d The Australian, March 14, 2014, p.14<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Adelaide Festival Music Theatre O dream of joy this departure is indeed, a spellbinding voyage through sight and sound Rime of the Ancient Mariner The Tiger Lillies. Her Majesty\u2019s Theatre , 58 Grote Street. Duration 1 hours 30 minutes March 12. Tickets $ 30 – $ 79 Bookings : BASS 131 246 or adelaidefestival.com.au Until March 14. One of the great narrative poems in English literature, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, written in 1797 by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31,5,11,19,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2409","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-31","category-archive","category-festival","category-international","category-theatre"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2409","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2409"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2409\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2410,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2409\/revisions\/2410"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}