A glittering debut at the ballet: How the newest Juliet measured up

DANCE
Romeo and Juliet
Sydney Opera House
April 24 to May 13
Reviewed by CHANTAL NGUYEN
★★★

Romeo and Juliet is a jewel in the ballet canon, danced to Prokofiev’s ravishing score. In place of Shakespeare’s immortal verse, the music and movement speak of obsession and despair. And, like the play, acting is everything: a production rises or falls on the dramatic conviction of its dancers.

The Australian Ballet has staged John Cranko’s version since the 1970s, each revival a proving ground for successive generations. The company has a strong record, but this year’s opening night fell short.

Grace Carroll debuted as Juliet. Carroll is a recent household name in Australian dance circles, known for winning prestigious international prizes as a student. Her technical prowess is extraordinary – gorgeous lines, featherweight lightness, effortless extensions, confident airiness – imbued with youthful freshness.

But at its fullest, Juliet is one of the great dramatic roles and demands more: a deep commitment to emotional truth. Legendary Juliets burn in your memory long after the curtain falls, communicating through dance feelings as vast as those Shakespeare gave her: “My bounty is as boundless as the sea, My love as deep; the more I give to thee.”

In that sense, Carroll is not quite ready for opening night Juliet. At best, the performance appears like someone merely instructed to act happy or sad, rather than drawing from a coherent emotional centre. The same pleasant expression greets Romeo’s gaze, Tybalt’s frown, and the Nurse’s curtsy.

The shock at the deaths of Romeo and Paris is muted and indistinct. Ballet newcomers or those prioritising technique may enjoy this interpretation, but others might prefer casts on alternate dates, including the much-loved Yuumi Yamada’s Juliet debut, and the excellent Callum Linnane’s farewell performances as Romeo.

Opposite Juliet, the lacklustre chemistry undermined Joseph Caley’s Romeo, but his boyish demeanour and assured stage presence proved stabilising. Ensemble dancing was sometimes untidy, though individual moments delivered.

Jarryd Madden’s Tybalt was a coiled threat, imperious and deadly with a sword. Jett Ramsay’s Paris looked every inch the nobleman. Serena Graham’s grief scene as Lady Capulet was one of the most compelling expressions of love in the entire ballet. Cameron Holmes and Marcus Morelli (Benvolio and Mercutio) were instant audience favourites.

Precious Adams, Mia Heathcote, and Yamada shone as street dancers. The recent recruitment of Adams — an international ballet celebrity — from the English National Ballet is something of a coup. If her performances continue as charismatic as tonight’s, she will reshape Australian expectations of leading female dancers.

THEATRE
The Lion King
Capitol Theatre, April 23
Reviewed by CASSIE TONGUE
★★★½

When The Lion King roared onto Broadway 29 years ago, it made Disney a major stage player. Julie Taymor’s innovative vision for adapting the beloved 1994 film lent the studio credibility, and the production solidified a pipeline for film-to-stage adaptations that has become a worldwide juggernaut.

The show has been embraced by Australian audiences too, touring to record-breaking numbers in 2003 and again in 2013. Now back at Sydney’s Capitol Theatre and with strong presales, the question remains: can we feel the love tonight – for a third time?

There’s still much to appreciate about this musical. The show’s opening number – where a procession of animals, brought to life by a breathtaking and surprisingly moving combination of costumes and puppetry (by Taymor and Michael Curry), parade down the auditorium aisles and onto the stage, and mandrill Rafiki (Buyi Zama) leads the company in the exultant Circle of Life – is sublime.

Those 10 minutes of only-in-the-theatre magic alone could make the case for bringing the musical back again, no matter how the rest of the show unfurls. Almost.

But cracks start to show right after that number. The usual Disney polish and perfection is missing in this production, which is beleaguered by awkward timing and line delivery in scenes, and a few shaggy, still-percolating performances. Then there’s the music.

The score – which balances the original and Elton John’s songs from the film, as well as enriching, expanded African soundscapes that first appeared on the Rhythm of the Pride Lands sequel soundtrack (all music and lyrics by John, Tim Rice, Lebo M, Mark Mancina, Jay Rifkin and Hans Zimmer) – is still beautiful.

But the musical’s sound design and mix is unclear and unbalanced. Live percussionists, either side of the stage, play beats that rest uncomfortably on top of the orchestra, which has for this tour been significantly reduced.

The difference is noticeable and, for a musical where the score is essential to lift us to new emotional heights, it is damaging to the show’s emotional impact. Everything is a little bit colder.

There are still pockets of joy: the production design, especially when it blends performer and environment, brings grasses and plants to life with dancers, which is still a treat; the lions’ masks are still striking. And Nick Afoa’s return to The Lion King (he played Simba in 2013 and is now the heart of the cast as Mufasa) is welcome; his regal bearing and lovely, loving laughter gives the first act a much-needed glow of warmth.

And that opening number really does stay with you well after the show is over.

But this time around, it’s more likely that the strongest magic is happening in the audience: your fondness for the film and past tours of the show make what’s happening on stage more powerful, and life-affirming magic is stored in memories we make when we share those experiences with children and loved ones – for the first time, or over and over again.

MUSIC
Labyrinths of Time
Genevieve Lacey & the Sydney Symphony Orchestra
City Recital Hall, April 23
Reviewed by PETER McCALLUM
★★★½

This program of recent takes on ancient music highlighted a shift in attitudes by today’s composers from past traditions, and arguably carried a message about our collective confidence in the future.

Twentieth-century neo-classicism, as practiced emblematically by Stravinsky, gave hard modernist edges and a cool objective light to the gracious phrases of old music, conveying unsentimental curiosity and faith in new discoveries.

But in this concert, works such as Lisa Illean’s arrangements of Chansons by the 15th century Burgundian composer Gilles Binchois, or Thomas Ades’ Shanty – Over the Sea, bathed the forms of the past in a sense of mystery, spirituality and loss.

Using 12 string instruments, Illean treated the first chanson, Amours merchi, with delicate softness. In the second, Adieu, adieu, the lower textures were taken even further into hushed meditative stasis, while high solo violin phrases cut through with penetrating sweetness.

Tom Coult’s Prelude (after Monsieur de Sainte-Colombe) evoked the reverent world of solitary reflection conjured up in the film Tous les matins du monde about the composer Marais (played by Gerard Depardieu) and venerable viola da gamba player Sainte-Colombe (father of the composer quoted in this piece).

Using a quintet of double-bass, cellos and violas, the work started in warm, rhythmically amorphous phrases that occasionally rose to moments of forward-moving impulse, only for them to be halted with ruminative uncertainty.

Illean’s Swellsong for bass recorder (Genevieve Lacey), strings and pre-recorded strings placed a mournful, solemn plainchant on recorder against wispy string textures that evoked high swirling birds and shifting clouds of delicate density. These three works formed a meditative bracket in which time seemed to be drawn out.

Caroline Shaw’s Entr’acte, inspired by the Minuet and Trio of Haydn’s String Quartet, Opus 77, No. 2, juxtaposed rhythms reminiscent of Haydn’s with glassy, almost inaudible echoes. Its middle sections flipped these into brighter but still quiet plucked sections. These became more hesitant, and the point where the opening idea returned was like being dragged from heavy slumber.

Lacey then treated the audience to an unmediated, energised dip into the past with a performance of Giovanni Sammartini’s Recorder Concerto in F. Lacey played with birdlike virtuosic brightness in the outer movements and projected the slow movement with expressive poignancy.

Ades’ Shanty began as though in weariness, gaining animation in each verse to reach a point of tonal fullness and dishevelled swagger before losing momentum and receding into misty dissonance. The outer works of the program were the liveliest.

Erkki Veltheim’s A Playford Maze – A Montage from the Dancing Master arranged dances from John Playford’s 17th century dance primer, alternating energised brightness and enervated languor. Lacey’s playing (always from memory) was by turns effervescent and piquant. Alice Chance’s Nose Scrunch Reel evoked the composer’s Melbourne busking days with raucous energy and salty “wrong” chords.

MUSICAL THEATRE
GUTENBERG! THE MUSICAL!
Hayes Theatre, April 15
Until May 10
Reviewed by JOHN SHAND
★★★½

For those of you reading this on a screen, and who didn’t know there was another way, about 586 years ago, a German bloke named Johannes Gutenberg shook things up with a device called a printing press.

While this did a thorough job of putting the clerical longhand copyists out of business, his printed books helped to foster literacy and spread ideas that were germane to fostering the Renaissance.

So, his was about as big a contribution to our world as one can make or – how shall I put this for the screen-addicted? – up there with the inventors of Facebook and TikTok.

Not your usual subject matter for a musical then – or even for a musical within a musical, as this is, written by Anthony King and Scott Brown in 2005. Doug (Stephen Anderson) and Bud (Ryan Gonzalez) are two aged-care workers who’ve penned the titular musical, and they are presenting it to an audience in the hope of attracting a Broadway producer.

Because they have no budget, they play the avalanche of characters themselves, delineating them with names on baseball caps. They are accompanied only by Charles (musical director Zara Stanton) on piano, so, in the grand scheme of musicals, it’s as cheap as chips to mount.

Richard Carroll’s production, with every “i” dotted and “t” crossed, adds up to a fun night out, not so much because of the music – I can’t imagine ever thinking, “I must play Gutenberg! The Musical! ”– as because it’s intermittently very funny, and Anderson and Gonzalez expertly ensure no laughs go begging.

Indeed, they compound the humour with the exaggeratedly precise singing, visual gags and execution of Shannon Burns’ intrinsically amusing choreography.

Given the show within the show is set up as amateurish, much of the comedy doesn’t rely on story or characters so much as the solutions to no-budget staging – from the hats to a stuffed cat, cardboard boxes as a bucket and the printing press, and a stepladder for a tower.

Intermittently, Doug and Bud step out of character to explain what’s going on, why certain songs are in the show when they don’t seem to belong, or the mechanics of musicals.

“A motif,” Doug tells us, “is when you use the same piece of music over and over again, but it’s not lazy.”

It’s worth going just to see the singing rats, or Gonzalez’s evil Monk (who doesn’t want the hoi polloi able to read the Bible, so he can falsify its contents), or Stephenson playing Helvetica, Gutenberg’s love interest and font inspiration.

Often it seems more geared for nine-year-olds, rather than adults, in its cartoonishness. It’s also zany, satirical, goofy, quaintly folksy and warm-hearted, and the design elements are as sharp as the performances, directing, accompaniment and choreography.

Just don’t expect to go home whistling any of the tunes.

MUSIC
ITZY
TikTok Entertainment Centre, April 19
Reviewed by MICHAEL RUFFLES
★★★½

Of the several waves of K-pop artists to hit our shores of late, Itzy provide the kind of conditions that can be enjoyed for a couple of hours without fear of crashing into anything dangerous.

The five-member girl group may lack the star power of Blackpink or the theatricality of Ateez, but they have carved out a niche with snappy songs and catchy choreography, built around themes of young love and empowerment.

They open the shows on their third world tour, Tunnel Vision, with the recent single of the same name: a hip-hop-laden dance number built as much for the gym as the club.

The safety in paint-by-numbers continues, with the defiant Girls Will Be Girls and the uplifting Wannabe, both verging on the anthemic but wrapped in bubblegum.

Variety is never far away. Walk is a distant cousin to Vogue, while the lovey-dovey trio Supernatural, Nocturne and Imaginary Friend are less Madonna and more M2M (if you remember them).

The five bring the sultry and seductive along with the sweet. They work well together, with at least a dozen back-up dancers, although bleached-blonde band leader Yeji and chief rapper/main dancer Ryujin steal some of the focus and are blessed with extra star quality.

This is reinforced with the solos. Lia’s Asylum is pretty, if imperfectly executed; Yuna’s Tangerine is fun, if not especially memorable; Yeji’s perky Pocket shows off her assets as an all-rounder; Chaeryeong’s Undefined emphasises dancing over singing; Ryujin’s Look is the most unabashed fun.

For Act III, Itzy go country – but think Kylie more than Lee Kernaghan as they set up a saloon to dance around in. The highlights are That’s a No No, which has found viral success after first emerging on an EP in 2020 thanks to a new dance, and the crazy-in-love Loco.

For the encore Itzy speed-run through some fan favourites and introduce the glitchy and discombobulated 8-bit Heart. It does not amount to anything more or less than the sum of its parts, although all the bits are fun. The same could be said of the show.