Earnest glam rock and pure joy collide in a spectacular gig

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MUSIC
The Last Dinner Party ★★★★
Sidney Myer Music Bowl, January 15

The stage is set with a patchwork of torn, off-white curtains, arches, a hanging bell and plenty of steps and levels for the band to pace and parade. And they do.

The Last Dinner Party perform at Sidney Myer Music Bowl.

Preppy, bacchanalian baroque pop band The Last Dinner Party comprises five women and non-binary folks (and a guy on drums up the back) in velvet and lace, and armed with various audaciously shaped guitars, synths, a baby grand, a mandolin, a sax, and enough charisma to carry off these melodramatic and infectious songs. It’s earnest glam rock. They know how to chew the scenery.

Their recent second album, From The Pyre, is showcased here – a confident and ornate bunch of songs drawing on early Kate Bush and 1970s rock operatics.

After opener (and highlight) Agnus Dei, we’re lifted through killer harmonies, playfully erudite lyrics and big solos in songs like Count the Ways, The Feminine Urge, and I Hold Your Anger.

In just a couple of years, The Last Dinner Party has released two albums and amassed an adoring fanbase. They’re 20-something, they skew female and queer, and they’re all in. They’re dressed up and equipped with tributes – flowers, signs, a homemade pair of angel wings – and the band gives back. Lead singer Abigail Morris even scrawls drawings on a few people in the front row, which they’ll go off and get tattooed.

By the end of the set when they whip out their debut single and most enduring hit Nothing Matters and the very fun This Is the Killer Speaking, the crowd is fully locked in, even committing to choreography. Then they wrap it up with a brief reprise of Agnus Dei, like it’s all been one big musical spectacular.

If you’re ever sitting down near the front at a show at the music bowl, turn around during a really big number and witness the crowd behind you. Pure joy.
Reviewed by Will Cox

CIRCUS
Duck Pond, ★★★★
Circa, Princess Theatre, until January 25

Letting actual acrobats loose on the most sacred of ballet relics, Swan Lake, feels like the logical endpoint of a long-term trend in which ballet has come to resemble an extreme sport: an exhibition of uncanny flexion and vertiginous airtime.

Duck Pond is a reimagining of Swan Lake.

Hardworking Brisbane circus company Circa offers nothing like a traditional retelling of the bewitched swan. Instead, this is a blithely impertinent mash-up: Odette as the Ugly Duckling, dreaming herself into a swan.

Duck Pond opens at the prince’s birthday party, a full court of gentle gymnasts flipping, tumbling and vaulting into walkovers, then stacking on shoulders. The port de bras is impeccable, if port de bras now means balancing your mate on your head.

Highlights include a startling four-high human tower, made all the more impressive in the Princess Theatre’s relative intimacy, and an aerial-silk act with Asha Colless holding a clean split before pitching forward into a core-straining horizontal line.

The story barrels along. The Black Swan (Maya Davies) arrives and the Ugly Duckling (Sophie Seccombe) is shamed for her lack of glamour. A troupe of mop-wielding ducks tries to console her but it doesn’t work – like Charlie Curnow, she must become a swan.

Overall, Duck Pond is a wonderfully polished take on modern circus.

At the local pond, in a sequence of roof-raising throws, the Duckling discovers that she, too, can soar. Jethro Woodward’s sound design is here at its most inventive, with a cool reworking of Tchaikovsky, swapping passion for quirky play.

In the final act, Duck Pond takes a holiday turn as the fairytale ending is shoved aside. Instead of a wedding, the road cases roll in and the floor gets torn up. Everything is stripped: both the stage and the performers.

Well, no one’s actually nude, but some of the burlesque-flavoured business does skew older than you might expect for an all-ages show. The merriment ends with crowd-pleasing circus staples: hula hoops and Cyr wheel.

Overall, it’s a wonderfully polished example of company director Yaron Lifschitz’s take on modern circus: a brisk dramatic premise that lets a youthful ensemble refresh some otherwise familiar routines.
Reviewed by Andrew Fuhrmann

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