Category: Cabaret

Cabaret, Circus

The MC Showroom Presents The Odditorium

The Odditorium entertains, baffles and delights

By Owen James

A vaudevillian cabaret night full of circus tricks and magic is hiding at The MC Showroom, just off Chapel Street in Prahan. The Odditorium is packed full of beautiful simplicity, daring feats of showmanship and pure imagination.

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Our host, Sophie DeLightful, invites us into this night of immersive entertainment with an invitation (or perhaps warning) of upcoming audience interaction, her raunchy and bold personality providing the energy and presence needed for a cabaret host – she fits the role perfectly. Her powerful vocals during songs scattered throughout the show are sensational, providing bursts of energy at just the right moment and her Buffer Boys will give any masseuse in Melbourne a run for their money.

The very talented Mr Marmalade charmed us for a solid half-hour, eliciting numerous gasps and rounds of applause from the audience. Marmalade is a highly skilled (and charming) magician who is also a truly beautiful storyteller – a simple paper bag can become an object of mystery with his carefully chosen words. His utter perfection in sleight of hand occurs just inches away from his transfixed audience, each trick as mesmerising as the last. Entering with just two small bags of tricks and a moustache with a life of its own, we get the feeling that Mr Marmalade’s act could travel and delight absolutely anywhere, street side or amphitheatre.

After a short interval, The Quizzical Mr Jeff brings his visual, prop-based comedy to the stage for the second act – and while the stage of the MC Showroom isn’t the smallest I’ve seen, Mr Jeff certainly needs every single inch of it for his dazzlingly physical finale! The Quizzical Mr Jeff is a daring performer, who uses every prop he brings onstage to its full possible extent (a personal highlight being a tango with a hat stand!). As we watch everyday objects take on a magical life of their own, this mystical man utilises audience interaction as well as a heavy reliance on precise timing of audio cues to bring his unique world to life – although further rehearsal to perfect the synchronised timing might have been beneficial.

Sound mixing and lighting from co-producer Alexandra Nel was simple but effective, LEDs creating soft washes of colour that faded into blackness.

The Odditorium entertains, baffles and delights, just like a true night of vaudeville and circus magic should. It is the perfect show for this intimate venue and a wonderful evening’s entertainment as an antidote to life outside – you will leave with pained cheeks from unavoidable smiles. I am looking forward to suggested future varied instalments of this collection of sideshow oddities!

Dates: 11 – 20  January

Venue: The MC Showroom, 48 Clifton St, Prahran

Times: 8:00pm

Prices: $22 – $35

Bookings: http://www.themcshowroom.com/event/the-odditorium-a-vaudeville-experience/

Cabaret, Review, Whats On

The Kransky Sisters Present A VERY KRANSKY CHRISTMAS

Deliciously oddball holiday humour

By Leeor Adar

The Kransky Sisters are the kookiest cabaret act gracing Australia, and really, they’ve become cultural icons in their own right including memorable TV appearances on programs on Spicks and Specks and Adam Hills Tonight. I doubt many pictured backwater Australia as three sheltered sisters as a comic-cabaret gothic triad, but nonetheless here they are in all their kooky mod-squad glory.

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The Kranskys are touring pre-holidays to offer some quirky Christmas cheer to Australians everywhere. Appearing at the relatively new kid on the block, the Alex Theatre, the sisters Mourne, Eve and Dawn (Annie Lee, Christine Johnston and Carolyn Johns) bring the house down with their hilarious songs, revamped versions of club hits, and strange stories from their fictional lives.

For those who don’t know the Kranskys’ origin tale, it starts out like most caravan dreams: Mourne and Eve’s mother runs off with their uncle, leaving them with their half-sister Dawn, the tuba-playing and long-suffering member of the pack. They live in Esk in small-town Queensland, and ever dressed alike, conduct their everyday Aussie lives whilst enabling each other’s sheltered world-views – with marvelously funny results.

To get everyone in the mood for their fabulously off-beat humour, a slideshow shared highlights of the sisters’ travels over the past year. It’s particularly funny to those who like the odd and unsettling – which is pretty much everyone in the audience – because we didn’t come for a Barbie sideshow, and the wonderful seriousness of their vibe only heightens the absurdity.

Mourne (clearly the dominant sibling), tells stories from their childhood and adult lives, and Eve nods in agreement and chimes in, whereupon they’re often completing each other’s sentences as Dawn eyeballs them. Songs intersperse their histories, from singing Thriller to an unsuspecting Swedish backpacker, to taking same backpacker to a nightclub only to regale the night through song to us – we really get a solid dose of Kransky Does Pop: Sia, Daft Punk etc. etc. and it’s an absolute hoot as the sexual undertones of the music are utterly lost on them. Brandishing the tuba, and an oddball collection of other instruments, they give us a new vantage point to confection music by injecting their gloomy-folk magic to it.

The Kransky Sisters are a highly talented performance trio, and their style, music and unique way of storytelling gives them the enduring creative edge to attract audiences for years to come. I know that I will happily attend their next Christmas shindig if they will have me.

If you want to catch the kooky Kranskys, you may need swallow your pride for some audience participation – but boy will it make for some fun! You’ll find them touring Melbourne until the 26 November, and then on to NSW, QLD, SA and ACT.

For Melbourne:

20th – 26th November, 2017

Alex Theatre

135 Fitzroy Street,

St Kilda, Melbourne, VIC

Info & tickets: www.alextheatrestk.com and ticketek.com.au

For other upcoming locations, dates and ticketing, head to the following link: http://www.thekranskysisters.com/touring

Cabaret

Q44 Theatre Presents NK: A KAZANTZAKIAN MONTAGE

A valiant effort to portray a remarkable man

By Myron My

Cretan writer and philosopher Nikos Kazantzakis is perhaps most well-known for his two novels Zorba the Greek and The Last Temptation of Christ, and his epic poem The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel. However, Kazantzakis also led a life of adventure, passion and exploration and in Howard F. Dossor’s NK: A Kazantzakian Montage, important and life-changing moments from his personal story are presented and examined.

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The story is told with the aid of a Greek Chorus that gives life to Kazantzakis’ stories, and allows the impressive nine performers (Elyssia Koulouris, Erin Marshall, Kostas Illias, Nicole Coombs, Paul Pellegrino, Sebastian Gunner, Tabitha Veness, Tania Knight, Will Atkinson) to easily switch in and out of the Chorus to become a person from Kazantzakis’ life. Alex Tsitsopoulos as Kazantzakis displays an sound understanding of who this writer was, and delivers a thoughtful performance. However, the production falls into the trap of having Kazantzakis explaining how certain experiences made him feel and what they meant to him, rather than showing us why these moments were important. This resulted in long monologues with less impact, particularly evident in the final scene with the Chorus that had the potential to be a climatic moment and bring this unique life’s story full circle.

While it is an ambitious task to condense seventy-four years into a two-hour show, it felt overall that the work was trying to depict too much, and therefore momentous events Kazantzakis’ life were merely skimmed. His first marriage, which lasted for 15 years, was over within minutes in the show, and his exploration of the monasteries of Mount Athos with his friend and poet, Angelos Sikelianos, while creating some great visuals and certainly marked as an important experience for him, was not given the time that it seemed to warrant.

The live music by Pantelis Krestas and his bouzouki and the sound design by Justin Gardham work well together in creating an authentic Greek ambience – along with some enthusiastic clapping from the audience – and also in bringing out the emotional layers of the story. John Collopy‘s lighting design creates the ambience for each scene and highlights the intensity of Kazantzakis’ emotions. Suzanne Heywood‘s direction utilises the space creatively and through minimal use of props and positioning of the performers is able to set up some visually arresting moments, including the earlier mentioned scene at Mount Athos.

NK: A Kazantzakian Montage is a look at the political, philosophical and intimate nature of a man who never stopped asking questions about life. While it’s great to see Q44 Theatre stepping outside of their familiar repertoire with this form of story and storytelling, the reliance on lengthy exposition and the structure of this narrative unfortunately never allows the audience to profoundly understand and become familiar with Nikos Kazantzakis.

NK: A Kazantzakian Montage was performed at Gasworks Arts Park between 14 – 17 November 2017.

Image by John Collopy

Cabaret, Performances, Review

Robyn Archer in QUE RESTE T’IL (WHAT REMAINS?)

A chanteuse’s love song to la musique

By Leeor Adar

Australian luminary and chanteuse Robyn Archer takes her Melbourne audience through a journey of harsh cityscapes and loving sentiments in Que reste t’il (What Remains?). I suspect the ‘What Remains?’ of her performance is an ode to the love affair we have with French music and how ingrained it has become within our popular culture.

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What is so enthralling about Archer’s performance is her engagement with her audience. When an awkward twenty-something seated beside her relatively conservative mother can both burst into song along with the crowd, you know that the conductor of such an experience is of the gifted kind. The crowd is filled with those who have supported Archer for decades, and she certainly knows how to command them with her voice and wit.

Accompanied by Michael Morley on piano, and Paul Butrumlis on accordion, Archer’s music sails through the turbulent times of Paris from the late nineteenth century and as far as the 1970s – even stopping to deliver an outsider’s perspective of the city of lights in Cole Porter’s You Don’t Know Paree. Archer interspersed her songs with stories of the era – a charming education on the history of live performance, with decadent and tragic stories ranged from lesser-known artists to the crowded halls of the Dadaist movement. It is apparent in ‘What Remains?’ that Parisian cabaret was not afraid to regurgitate the city’s own horrors and grime, juxtaposed with the songs concerning quaint longings of love that perch in a higher place above the cityscape.

I found Archer’s ability to weave history through French songs a marvellous form of escapism. My eyes even misted over during a rendition of Marie-Louise Damien’s Pluie: Damien, as Archer explains, was a chanteuse of the Parisian cabaret lesser known than Édith Piaf, but her music was exquisite, as Archer showcases. From Jacques Brel (who’s music dominates the night), Archer takes on some comic short rides with Aristide Bruant’s It Takes Cash, the kitsch delight The Singing Nun’s Dominique and the steamy Serge Gainsbourg/Brigitte Bardot’s Je t’aime. ‘What Remains?’ is such a tasty and eclectic mix of tragi-ballads and humour, where nothing musical of the French variety is left unturned.

The night came to a roaring close with two comic renditions – Alouette where everyone chimed in, and a bastardisation of Piaf’s Non, je ne regrette rien. Archer and her team exited the stage with thundering applause behind them – we really wanted more than an encore.

Francophiles found themselves in a comforting terrain in ‘What Remains?’, and for those remaining, find themselves delightfully haunted by the songs that have pervaded their lives through various mediums over the years.

‘Que reste t’il (What Remains?)’ was performed at Melbourne’s Arts Centre, 10-12 November 2017. Follow Archer’s latest here: http://robynarcher.com/

Image by Claudio Raschella

Cabaret, Festivals, Whats On

Melbourne Fringe 2017: MADAME NIGHTSHADE’S POISON GARDEN

Raucous ridiculousness done incredibly well

By Joana Simmons

Imagine a world where there are no rules, and your wildest silliest and most creative urges could be realised. In Madame Nightshade’s Poison Garden, Melbourne-based clown, theatre-maker, workshop facilitator and circus performer Anna Thomson creates this world, having an absolute ball herself in the process. It’s raucous ridiculousness done incredibly well.  The detail and creativity in the props, set and physicality paves the way for boundless fits of laughter as the outrageousness builds.

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Before the show even starts, the Friday night full house at La Mama are all in the mood for mischief. The intimacy of the theatre means we are instantly all friends ready for a unique experience. Anna Thompson requested at the end of the show for us not to tell anyone about it…. it’s fair to say that there are copious surprises that I could spoil, each one as incredible as the next. The set and creative art designed by Lara Week is of a garden, featuring vegetables, nightshade, a table and a compost bin. There’s intricacy to the props like a magic show and in the way that Thompson integrates them to the physicality of Beatrice (a devilish shape-shifter) and her alter-ego, Madame Nightshade. Through the show we are faced with several ideas – our effect on the planet, where we sit into societal stereotypes (and how we break those) and that ‘there’s shit in the beauty, and there’s beauty in the shit.’

This dark, visceral physical comedy incorporates clowning, buffoonery and queer spectacle. It’s a type of work that defies labels or boxes, and stands alone in its own little genre of twisted brilliance. Thomson’s characterisation and commitment throughout is impressive. Each facial expression of simple utterance says so much, holding us in the right amount of tension to relieve it or break the frame, leaving us the audience laughing and on our toes for what is next. My favourite moments, to give you a taster of what makes this show wonderful, was the spring-onion sword-fight to Prodigy’s “Smack my B***h Up,” King-Kong crunch (complete with every audience member participating) and anytime Thompson squeezed herself into something small and unexpected. The soundtrack, produced by Jacky T, combining everything from Alice Cooper to Disney, adds great drama and comedy. Sarah Ward (creator of famous cabaret character Yana Alana) was director, and should be applauded for creating not only an aesthetically engrossing show, but also a glamorously grotesque one. Thompson’s slick timing, facial expression and physicality says more than the sporadic snippets of storyline, and is hilarious.

A weirdly wild wonderful world is the best way to describe Madame Nightshade’s Poison Garden. It’s high class and full of laughs and an opportunity to go to unique crazy places. Appreciate the absurdity and get twisted up in the nightshade – book today.

Madame Nightshade’s Poison Garden is playing at La Mama, 21 September- 1 October  7:30 PM, Wed 6:30 PM, Sun 4:00 PM.

https://www.melbournefringe.com.au/event/madame-nightshades-poison-garden/

Cabaret

Theatreworks Presents BIG HEART

Intelligent, and as emotionally reserved as its protagonist

By Rebecca Waese

Long-time collaborators writer Patricia Cornelius and director Susie Dee deliver Big Heart which tells the story of the Mother (Andrea Swifte) a wealthy Australian woman who adopts babies from five different continents of the world. Big Heart examines the generosity and greed of a privileged woman with a big yet cool and conditional heart. Her adoption scheme reveals imperial undertones that says more about her own needs than those of her children.

 

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Through a series of stylized, physical vignettes, we see the growth of the adoptees from wailing babies through the hectic blur of childhood and teenager drama into young adulthood.  While Mother does much right – encourages her children to learn about the culture from their countries of origin, Viet Nam, Sudan, Bosnia, Nicaragua and Indigenous Australia, and tells them each the details of their adoption story – love seems thin at home. The children are isolated within their family collective and dysfunction between siblings grows. Mother has a particular blind spot towards her Indigenous son, Charles, played effectively by Sermsah Bin Saad, and reveals some ignorant beliefs about his culture and nature. Mother’s direct addresses to the audience establish intimacy but no revelations; the character changes little over the decades and the audience is not permitted into the inner workings of her mind. I found the convention of adults playing children a little wearisome at times but as the children developed into young adults, their desires to belong and cope with the racism of upper-class white Australia are portrayed deftly and with feeling by Daniela Farinacci, Kasia Kaczmarek, Vuyo Loko and Elmira Jurik.

Set and costume designer, Marg Worwell, creates an opulent world and dresses the children in coordinated knits like a United Colours of Benetton ad. Lighting, by Rachel Burke, and sound design, by Darius Kedros, build different worlds, including Uluru at sunset as the characters visit the symbolic heart of Australia as multicultural tourists.

With allusions to the Stolen generation and the human trafficking side of global adoption, Big Heart was smart but guarded; it made me think more than it made me feel although it may strike closer to home for those more closely connected to adoption.

Big Heart
Theatre Works, 14 Acland Street, St. Kilda
Season: 7 – 24 September 2017 (preview: 6 September)
Information and Bookings: www.theatreworks.org.au

Image by Pier Carthew

Cabaret

Arts House Presents NIGHTDANCE

Outstanding

By Leeor Adar

Nightdance is the most rhythmically breathtaking performance I’ve seen this year, and potentially of all time. It’s uniquely its own thing, and you simply cannot tear your eyes away from it.

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The Arts House space transforms into a nightclub that would make the most progressive amongst dancers feel the need to move towards it. A floor stretched in midnight fabric, the bodies of three dancers begin their almost alien movements towards ecstasy.

Melanie Lane directs, and her fellow dancers co-create the work. Performers Lilian Steiner, Gregory Lorenzutti and Lane herself are astonishing professionals in their craft, and Nightdance is a testament to their talent and vigour as dancers. Inspired undoubtedly from her dual base of Berlin/Melbourne, Lane offers us something refreshing and exciting.

The stamina of the performers mirrors in a short space of time those clubbers who can go all night, never tired and driven by the energy of the space. Chris Clark’s sound design and composition of electronica are deep and intense – you can really feel it in your bones, urging you to move. It’s totally cathartic and I find myself envying the appearance of their total abandon and equally contained movements.

Spanning a multitude of genres, the piece as fluid as the dancing. Once we think Nightdance is just another erotic journey to club land, we jump into cabaret, and then we return to something more alien, darker, and frighteningly futuristic. It captures optimism and the downright weird. Inspired by the clubs of Berlin, Lane’s work really captures a scene that projects the future of connection through rhythm – I think about an almost Aldous-Huxley-inspired Brave New World, where the collective reaches heightened states of consciousness through rhythm and a primal urge towards something unspoken.

Nightdance thrills us a little, and arches our brows equally. The sudden appearance of a glittering conehead is totally offbeat, and makes the audience laugh. The piece moves through the ages of time and dance, and we find ourselves about 60 minutes later into the millennium which PVC dreams are made of.

This won’t be everyone’s cup of tea. Ben ‘Bosco’ Shaw’s lighting design might send some attendees into hiding, but those like myself who love to be immersed in the experience of club land will find it totally exhilarating. Lane and her team have successfully produced something hyper-modern and totally memorable.

Nightdance was peformed from 24 August – 27 August. Follow Lane’s latest here: https://melanielane.info/about and Arts House’s current season here: http://www.artshouse.com.au/whats-on/

Image by Bryony Jackson

Cabaret

Arts Centre Melbourne Presents Guru of Chai

A delight

By Joana Simmons

Every once in a while, a piece of live theatre combines the exact amount of all the right ingredients to make the perfect potion. New Zealand Company Indian Ink’s production Guru of Chai is as warm, sweet and spicy as chai itself. This beautiful romantic thriller is told by bucktoothed chameleon, Jacob Rajan, who energetically plays seventeen different characters that jump in and out of the epic tale. Accompanied by musician Adam Ogle, this is one wonderful story to get swept up in.

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The almost-full house on opening night is eating out of the palm of Rajan’s hand about three minutes in. He wins us over with charisma and comedy, telling us that all our problems (being stressed, being overweight, painful urination) will be gone by the end of the night. He transports us to bustling Bangalore railway station, painting an animated and, for anyone who has been to India, hilariously accurate picture. There at his chai stand, his life is changed with a young girl’s song, and the story develops from there. All elements of drama, pace, comedy, love, suspense and action flow and follow, skillfully enacted by Rajan. We are on board the whole way, with full belly-laughs and absolute breathless, edge-of-seat silence in some parts of this tale. It is magic.

It astounds me how Rajan played so many characters effortlessly to carry the story, and each character had its own personality and authenticity. You can see why this production has won two Edinburgh Fringe First awards, three Production of the Year awards, as well as achieving Best Play, Best Composer and Best Actor at the Chapman Tripp Theatre Awards. Written by Rajan and Justin Lewis, the story is succinct and gives us little lessons along the way to hang onto. For myself and my date for the evening, who have both spent some time in India, we were nodding our heads and laughing at how the little details were so true, and was wonderful to be transported back to the intense sensory experience that is India. The music and sound design by David Ward which was played onstage by Adam Ogle, weaves in the Eastern tones and sound effects to add dimension and drama. I loved when both performers sang together with so much commitment and heart.

John Verryt’s set and costume-design concept was both simple and beautiful, reminiscent of an Indian skyline and interior of a home or shop. This combined with Cathy Knowsley’s lighting design which cleverly uses torches and shadow very well.

I was lucky to catch this show on a Tuesday night in the middle of a very busy week. I was also developing a chest infection, which hardly had me in the mood for doing anything other than drinking tea; but this show fully put the spring back in my step and gave me a cup of tea as well. If you love escaping the every-day, this show is the one to do it. It’s heart-warming, it’s epic, and it even has a few words of wisdom. It was brilliant: I’m still smiling. Whilst it may not have left us no longer stressed, overweight, and suffering painful urination, it certainly proves that laughter is the best medicine.

Guru of Chai was performed 22-27 August, 2017 at Arts Centre Melbourne.

https://www.artscentremelbourne.com.au/event-archive/2017/theatre-drama/guru-of-chai

Cabaret

Red Stitch Presents THE WAY OUT

Sci-fi on stage full of dark foreboding

By Caitlin McGrane

Dystopian futures have traditionally been the domain of Australian film: it’s rare to see the richly constructed dramatic landscapes from Mad Max recreated on stage. Red Stitch‘s current production The Way Out is one such example, directed by Penny Harpham and with an impressively layered script written by Josephine Collins that tells the story of a dystopian Australia. Shortly after a civil war when the land has been contaminated and there’s only krill to eat, Helen (Brigid Gallacher) and her veteran father Stewart (Dion Mills) own a pub in Margo selling bootleg booze to Aussie battlers Ryan (Kevin Hofbauer) and Claire (Olga Makeeva). They are visited by a government inspector, Fyfe (the always impressive Rory Kelly) on the same day as their black-market goods peddler Harry (Sahil Saluja), throwing their quietly subversive life into chaos and opening the door just a little too much into the past.

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As the story unfolds, there’s a great sense of foreboding that casts a shadow over the rest of the play. A character coughs or Helen and Stewart recite their family motto, and you know it’s going to be important later. Each character is drawn with care and consideration, with nearly equal attention paid to all, and it’s impressive to watch that unfurl in a way that for the most part maintains its clarity and coherence.

The story itself seemed unusual to me for a stage play, but this worked to the play’s advantage because it enhanced my enjoyment of watching the cast working together as a team, as people (presumably) would need to in the event of a dystopian sci-fi-esque future.

With a running time of roughly 90 minutes, there is a lot to pack in, and I found the pacing towards the end to be slightly uneven. The characters had to do a lot of the scaffolding through the words of the script, and it would have been interesting in places to have a little more ‘show’ and a little less ‘tell’. It seemed to me the denouement felt slightly rushed; I had to clarify on the way home whether I had understood the play’s ending. That said, my attention was held throughout, and despite the larger story playing out just beyond the doors of the pub, I was engrossed by how this was being represented on stage.

The stage itself was tiny, and I was thoroughly impressed with the utilitarian staging (Liberty Gilbert and Natalie Lim), sets and costumes (Charlotte Lane) that brought the play’s ideas into physical being. Lighting design (Clare Springett and Michael Robinson) and sound (Daniel Nixon) were crafted to enhance the drama unfolding on stage. I love seeing Red Stitch plays because they feel like real labours of love, and like everyone has chipped in to bring this thing to an audience.

Maybe I’m being optimistic, but for me this idea of cooperation was also reflected in the way Helen looked after each character and tried to work together with everyone. The Way Out made me hopeful that if the worst were to happen, we might still be okay as a species.

22 August – 24 September (previews 22 – 29 August)

Red Stitch Actors Theatre, Rear 2 Chapel St, St Kilda

https://redstitch.net/bookings/

Image by Teresa Nobile Photography

Cabaret

BK Opera Presents LA TRAVIATA

A bold and ambitious new production

By Leeor Adar

Giuseppe Verdi’s accessible and lushly beautiful opera, La Traviata, is a favourite amongst opera lovers. The score is well-recognised across the globe, and it is certainly a treat to bask in its beauty up close.

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The story follows familiar operatic lines: at a decadent party, an untamed woman and courtesan Violetta falls irrevocably in love with a bourgeois countryman, Alfredo. Their love is doomed of course by external forces, tearing them from each other only to be reunited in tragedy.

Enter BK Opera, that markets itself as a unique emerging opera company. Nurturing talent without the larger-than-life set and pomp, the company tries to bring the opera right before its audience with its ‘no sets, no props, no microphone’ styling coupled with outstanding singing talent. On this occasion, director Kate Millett reincarnates La Traviata as a modern show of glitz and glamour at a high-end brothel.

Boy, did BK Opera deliver on the stagecraft. The audience sat across from one another with a runway of gold for a stage: simple, yet effective. Strewn across this golden runway were handmade tissue flowers at one point, and with the sweep of a broom, it made way for further action during the production. I was impressed with these slick and strategic decisions, including those made over the lavish costuming, which did not shy away from lace, sequins and sparkles to really add to the allure of the bordello.

However, the production occasionally fell into some shambles, with the string quartet conducted by James Penn making some unfortunate jarring mistakes on the night I attended, and with Alfredo’s (Patrick MacDevitt) volume levels, particularly in Act One drawing Violetta (Rada Tochalna) from far away into a loving reverie manifested as blasting sentiments of love. Aside from these clumsy moments, there are standout elements to the production: some of the ensemble work was charged and sexy, and Tochalna’s astonishing, rich voice and strong stage presence and characterisation really gave this production its power. Interestingly, Joshua Erdelyi-Gotz’s performance of Alfredo’s brother, Giorgio, felt more deserving as a nuanced love interest. Erdelyi-Gotz’s voice was rich, measured and conveyed wonderful emotion.

While I therefore found some elements of this production a little frustrating, I was incredibly impressed with its innovation, and for this reason I would keep an eye on future productions that BK Opera produces. Undoubtedly as a new company there will be teething problems, but I cannot ignore the magnitude of effort and ambition injected into their work.

La Traviata was performed 18-26 August, 2017 at Reid Street Auditorium in Fitzroy North. For information on upcoming BK Opera productions, visit their website: https://www.bkopera.com.au