Bran Nue Dae

by Jimmy Chi and Kuckles

seen at the Riverside Theatre (Parramatta) on 16 January 2020

Andrew Ross directs this revival of the thirty-year-old Aboriginal musical Bran Nue Dae with Ernie Dingo as Uncle Tadpole and Marcus Corowa as his nephew Willie, with musical direction by Michael Mavromatis and Patrick Bin Amat. It is part of the festival of Sydney

Willie, expelled from a Catholic school in Perth after antagonising the fierce pastor there, determines to travel back to his home town of Broome though somewhat nervous of meeting his mother and explaining his situation to her. He meets an older Aboriginal man, Uncle Tadpole, who decides to travel with him, and they hitch a ride with two hippies, a somewhat clueless young German and his Australian girlfriend. Their picaresque journey northwards, the naive Willie's education in matters of the heart, and their reception in Broome, form the basic story, but the chief glory of the show is the infectiously enjoyable music, exuberantly sung and danced by the company.

Anthem

by Andrew Bovell, Patricia Cornelius, Melissa Reeves, Christos Tsiolkas and Irine Vela, with assistance by Bryan Andy

seen at the Roslyn Packer Theatre (Sydney) on 15 January 2020

Susie Dee directs a cast of fourteen in this work of joint authorship presenting a slice of various Australian lives as crystallised on train journeys made (mostly) in Melbourne. Each author created scenes from observed situations on trains, the results being woven together as a series of interlinked episodes unified by musical threads composed by Irine Vela.

A previous project from 1998 called Who's Afraid of the Working Class? has provided the springboard for the current work, which the authors claim to be tougher, with 'no moments of redemption or reassurance .... unrelenting in the conclusions it draws'. They are certainly right about the tone, which veers from rueful acceptance of the grind of commuting on crowded trains to the raw anger of cultural and class repression with very few lighter moments to relieve the sense of frustration and rage hiding barely beneath the surface. 

The White Album

by Joan Didion

seen at the Roslyn Packer Theatre (Sydney) on 11 January 2020

Lars Jan and the Early Morning Opera group devised this staged adaptation of Joan Didion's celebrated essay on culture and counter-culture in the 1960s, with Mia Barron taking the principal part of reciting the text, five others taking minor parts, and a score or so of 'volunteers' providing the crowd background. It is part of this year's Sydney Festival.

On a bare stage with a wide box-like space at the back fronted by perspex floor-to-ceiling windows and sliding doors people mill about until the performance starts. Then an introductory exercise stills the cast (and the audience) and the recitation begins. Some aspects of the events Didion recounts and ruminates upon are acted out, or emblematically evoked, either on the stage or within the box: there is a particularly effective use of the white wall at the back to create slogans during the sequence concerning university sit-ins, and a slow motion enactment of gun violence in relation to the Manson murders.