2006<\/p>\n
Here Lies Love
\nDavid Byrne
\nRidley Centre<\/p>\n
The Three Furies
\nBy Stephen Sewell
\nDunstan Playhouse<\/p>\n
Macbeth
\nBy William Shakespeare
\nScott Theatre<\/p>\n
David Byrne is just the sort of person you want in a Festival. Since fronting the innovative, late 70s band Talking Heads, his singular career has continued to thrive with a fascinating array of projects – and his world premiere of Here Lies Love, a song cycle based on the life of Imelda Marcos, written in collaboration with Fat Boy Slim, promised much. <\/p>\n
And it delivers some. For a start, Byrne himself performs and narrates (complete with photo images) the Imelda story \u2013 rising from prom queen to wife of Ferdinand Marcos, the notoriously corrupt President of the Philippines. In a part club, part theatre setting, Byrne heads up a slick band of keyboards and percussion while his two talented lead singers \u2013 Dana Diaz-Tutaan as Imelda and Ganda Suthivarakom as the faithful servant, Estrella – belt out several dozen new and well-wrought compositions. There are few signs of Fat Boy Slim, but plenty of David Byrne\u2019s tuneful, upbeat rhythms. Despite his affable style, though, the show\u2019s narrative \u2013 and narration – is loose, equivocal and unfinished. Here Lies Love is still under construction and its direction not yet clear. It may yet be the hit of the Liverpool Festival, but Adelaide has seen only a project development.<\/p>\n
Three Furies is also a biography \u2013 of the UK painter Francis Bacon and his model and lover, George Hyde. Augmented by songs written by Basil Hogios and sung by Paul Kapsis, it explores the abusive, alcoholic love\/hate relationship between a painter who sees the world as meat and a young man too violated to be anything but unfair game. Stephen Sewell\u2019s text ramps up the melodrama and Jim Sharman\u2019s direction serves only to amplify it. With strips of neon along the stage, three doors waiting to become a triptych, and an onstage trio led by the composer, Three Furies is played like hellish cabaret. <\/p>\n
But despite Paul Capsis\u2019 best efforts with repetitious lines, and ghastly settings of William Blake\u2019s The Rose \u2013 the mawkish music undercuts the dramatic gain. Simon Burke is valiant, but miscast, as the Painter. Playing him as seedy matinee idol rather than conflicted introvert, he turns Bacon into ham while Socratis Otto\u2019s Cockney Model is reduced to proletarian caricature, Burke\u2019s performance (and Sewell\u2019s text) emphasises the cruelty towards Hyde, but ultimately the play gives us scant reason to care. This production is full of sound and Furies, but signifies far less than it could. <\/p>\n
A one person Macbeth ? What is this \u2013 economic rationalism gone completely
\nmad ? In fact, Stephen Dillane, astutely directed by Travis Preston, turns the Scottish play into an epic poem. It is a startling performance, fluent, restrained and full of intelligent surprises. Lady Macbeth is young, foxy and French, Malcolm has an upper class stammer, Macduff is reduced to stony silence at the death of the innocents. Performing on blackening iron sand with a trio of musicians who provide sounds of almost subliminal virtuosity, Dillane reveals in the play its harsh wit and haunting futility. <\/p>\n
Published as \u201cScottish Play Burns Intelligence\u201d, The Adelaide Review, No.288, 24 March, 2006, p.14.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
2006 Here Lies Love David Byrne Ridley Centre The Three Furies By Stephen Sewell Dunstan Playhouse Macbeth By William Shakespeare Scott Theatre David Byrne is just the sort of person you want in a Festival. Since fronting the innovative, late 70s band Talking Heads, his singular career has continued to thrive with a fascinating array of projects – and his world premiere of Here Lies Love, a song cycle based on the life of Imelda Marcos, written in collaboration with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-439","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archive","category-festival"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439","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=439"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":854,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/439\/revisions\/854"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=439"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=439"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=439"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}