Silent moments on public transport anchor this excellent show

THEATRE
Vigil ★★★★
Arts House, Until May 3

Our stages can be at their liveliest when they reflect the diversity that we see every day on the tram. Outer Urban Projects takes a literal approach to that in Vigil, crafting a suite of loosely connected vignettes set mostly on public transport, in an ambitious collaboration with artists across theatre, music, and contemporary dance.

Brainchild of director Irene Vela, this multidisciplinary work draws a large measure of its ethical and emotional inspiration from the public vigils sometimes held to commemorate victims of gendered violence.

Long before it ends with the large cast gathering, candles in hand, this piece mixes elegy with defiance, remembrance with protest. It creates the sense of a whole community onstage and shows that when women can’t rely on a fundamental right to safety, that is a wound felt by the whole community.

For a work with so many writers (including Patricia Cornelius) contributing, the action has a remarkably coherent flow.

It begins with a pensive monologue by an Indigenous man talking to himself and to Country on a tram, before abruptly shifting to feminine festivity as a raucous pre-nuptial celebration fills the scene, featuring wedding songs performed (with boisterous enthusiasm) by Arabic-speaking women’s ensemble, El Amal.

Variety and dramatic complexity continue to increase through encounters between passengers on public transport.

Young female friends laugh to themselves about the misogynistic stand-up comedy they’ve just seen, unleashing a cascade of offensive jokes from other women. Their defensive humour, and a transient moment of solidarity, will yield to menace when one of the friends, left alone, is confronted by a middle-aged male stranger.

Another sequence sees a social worker trying to calm a Muslim mother whose children have been taken away by child protection. Her task is made harder when another of her clients – a belligerent, and unabashedly Islamophobic, white woman who’s also the victim of life-threatening intimate partner violence – starts to bait the poor woman.

We follow a young Afro-Australian woman, out on the town, as she spills her guts to a bartender, revealing a sexual assault she never reported. Other characters appear only in monologue – one venting frustration at subliminal fears women shouldn’t have to reckon with, another offering a heartfelt eulogy for an irrepressible and imperfect mum.

Snapshots from trams and trains are threaded with interludes from a trio of musicians, and three dancers who bring to Tara Jade Samaya’s choreography all the tension and torsion of what remains unspoken on public transport. (There was a risk the contemporary dance might look decorative, but it’s dramatically integrated, sculpted seamlessly into the surrounding action.)Vigil is a sweeping and spirited, vital and genuinely moving fusion of theatre and dance, and among the more impressive performance works to emerge from this country in the wake of the #MeToo movement.

Reviewed by Cameron Woodhead

THEATRE
Art ★★★★
Comedy Theatre, until May 17

A vicious argument over an art purchase derails an old friendship in Yasmina Reza’s satirical three-hander, Art. The 1994 play was revived on Broadway last year starring Bobby Cannavale, Neil Patrick Harris and James Corden, and the casting of this new Australian production has celebrity lustre, too, with Richard Roxburgh, Damon Herriman and Toby Schmitz stepping into a brutally amusing ring of aesthetic dispute.

Conflict erupts when Serge (Herriman) buys a painting – an all-white painting, on an all-white canvas, with a couple of modest streaks, also white, running across it – for an eye-watering sum. His old mate Marc (Roxburgh) can’t believe it. He despises the painting, denounces it as “shit”, and develops an almost monomaniacal obsession with how awful it is.

Standing his ground, an offended Serge defends the artwork and strikes back against Marc’s unrestrained scorn. The aesthetic battle soon gets pitched and personal; the warring parties start crossing red lines, and their mutual friend Yvan (Schmitz) tries to appease both sides.

Yvan’s diplomatic efforts backfire. His sharp-tongued friends view him as a fence-sitter and turn their combined wrath on him. As passions and pretensions continue to fly, and with no middle ground, it seems either the painting or the friendship will have to go.

Art is as much about the contours and power dynamics of male friendship as it is about traditional hierarchies of aesthetic value. Both come under humorous scrutiny in a play that develops from a seemingly trivial premise, then quips and bickers and builds with Seinfeld-like obsessiveness into a post-industrial comedy of manners, fuelled by the bruised egos of self-appointed sophisticates, and an almost solipsistic sense of outrage at a perceived crime against taste.

Although the performances use neutral Australian accents, Lee Lewis’ production retains traces of a rather French approach to comedy, and Roxburgh works physical clowning into the mix. His Marc – slightly raffish, arrogant, combatively intellectual – has an anaphylactic reaction to bad art. He seems to loathe the painting so much that it causes him actual physical pain.

Marc’s spiked sense of superiority disguises darker and more pathetic truths, and there’s a complex charge in the battle between Roxburgh and Herriman, whose snaky, wounded Serge has a sincerity so relentless it might provoke the cynic in anyone.

As the man in the middle, Schmitz’s Yvan proves a broad comic foil for the extremity of the play’s antagonists, and he delivers the role’s highlight – a massively rambling and self-absorbed monologue (and truly epic whinge) – to instant applause.

Art is thought-provoking comedy that doesn’t skimp on entertainment, and Lewis’ assured, consistently droll production is a rare chance to see stars of this calibre live in a modern classic.
Reviewed by Cameron Woodhead

OPERA
Il dissoluto punito, ossia il Don Giovanni ★★★
Athenaeum Theatre, until 2 May

As the conductor raised his baton ready to begin Mozart’s overture, the woman behind me whispered to her companion, “So the plot basically is, Don Giovanni’s a prick”. Brief, but she’s not wrong.

Based on the legend of Don Juan, our title character is, depending on perspective, a charming, devilish Rake or a violent serial rapist. We follow the Don’s pursuits to his eventual demise, dragged into hell to pay for his crimes.

Melbourne Opera has assembled a brilliant cast of local singers for this ensemble-heavy piece. As the main man, Christopher Tonkin succeeds in both the suave and sadistic but vocally, gold is tied between Henry Choo (Don Ottavio) and Eleanor Greenwood (Donna Elvira). Ottavio is often played as weak and daggy opposite Giovanni, but Choo is authentically earnest, he makes light work of Mozart’s terribly difficult tenor arias. Greenwood’s impeccable depth of vocal colour depicts everything from fragility to hysteria. Bass-baritone Henry Shaw is hilarious as the sidekick Leporello, deservedly stealing all his scenes with his timing and use of text.

The unquestionable highlight though, is the music. Don Giovanni is conductor Raymond Lawrence’s best work to date, his elegant and nuanced interpretation of the score is without fault. As a consequence, the MO orchestra has never sounded better.

The choice to use the opera’s full title, Il dissoluto punito, ossia il Don Giovanni, (The Rake Punished, or Don Giovanni) is a deliberate one. It was promoted as Don Giovanni, ‘as you’ve never seen it before’ and as one to be viewed through a feminist, post-Epstein/Weinstein et al, lens.

It did not land. Other than using the female chorus as visual depictions of Giovanni’s conquests in the famous ‘Catalogue aria’ (where we learn Don has slept with more than 2000 women), it appears to be the same as every other version ever. A missed opportunity, which isn’t bad per se, it’s just not what we were promised.

Reviewed by Bridget Davies

THEATRE
Julius Caesar ★★★
Arts Centre Melbourne, until May 10

The assassination of Julius Caesar altered the course of history, just not in the way his killers intended. Brutus and other conspirators bumped off Julius, only to pave the road for Augustus and the vast Roman Empire, which would replace the Republic that the assassins wanted to defend. That dramatic irony wasn’t lost on Shakespeare, and the most overtly political of his plays holds lessons which continue to resonate today.

You don’t need to make much effort to see how Julius Caesar is relevant in a world experiencing upticks in authoritarianism, polarisation and violence – and we’re not exactly unfamiliar with decapitation strikes backfiring, either. Oddly, in that context, the latest Bell Shakespeare production eschews all but the most cursory contemporary frame.

This is a Julius Caesar set in a rusted industrial somewhere, complete with a doomy dark synth soundtrack and a couple of spartan, martial transformations after the play lets slip the dogs of war. It’s a speculative, slightly dystopian vision, with a vaguely video-game aesthetic.

I’ve seen Marc Antony played by women from Robyn Nevin to Natasha Herbert. Here, the noble Brutus is gender-reversed, and Brigid Zengeni’s performance proves the eye of the storm in this production, bringing a still intensity to Brutus’ idealism, and a wrenching quality to the scene in which Brutus keeps her wife Portia (Jules Billington) ignorant of her plans.

The play’s political intrigue unspools with swift inevitability, enlivened by the scruff and cunning of Leon Ford’s Cassius, the clean-cut complicity of Gareth Reeves’ Casca, and Ray Chong Nee, James Lugton, Ruby Maishman ably supporting as fellow conspirators.

Unfortunately, the cartoonish pomposity of Septimus Caton as Julius Caesar doesn’t leave much room for pathos, though it does give audiences more satisfaction when the first half ends, thriller-like, mid-stab.

After the interval, the wheels fall off the chariot.

Mark Leonard Winter as Marc Antony barely makes his presence felt in the first half and fearfully overcompensates in the second. I was uncertain whether the actor had a cold, but the arc from playboy figure to serious player lacked definition, and delivery of the verse seemed laboured by stress and strain – a strenuousness unconducive to letting the rhetoric work its magic.

Given that Marc Antony’s speech over Caesar’s corpse is one of the most famed pieces of political rhetoric of all time, that’s not ideal, although there’s an episodic flow to the aftermath, and Zengeni, Ford and Reeves meet their fates with grim dignity as the conspirators reap what they’ve sown.

There’s no denying the cast is talented. Yet this uneven production doesn’t always make full use of that talent and can feel curiously distanced, in comparison to other contemporary Shakespeare, from the world outside the theatre.
Reviewed by Cameron Woodhead

MUSIC
Masayoshi Takanaka ★★★★★
The Forum, April 26

You wouldn’t expect the audience for a 73-year old Japanese guitar prodigy to consist nearly entirely of crowdsurfing superfans in their mid- to late 20s. But Masayoshi Takanaka is riding a fresh wave of interest – all the way to his first ever Australian tour.

Across a six-decade career spanning 39 albums of bubbling disco- and funk-laced rock-fusion, Takanaka has long been a household name to Japanese audiences and Western crate-diggers attuned to the delights of Japan’s “city pop” subgenre. Beginning in the 1970s, Takanaka’s prolific career stems from the belief that slick production, relentlessly upbeat guitar solos and summery artwork are a portal to good times. So how in 2026 is Takanaka the hottest ticket in town?

Consensus is the algorithm has pushed Takanaka to a new generation drawn to the escapism of this feelgood universe. (That the resurgence occurred after the pandemic is no coincidence.) This is a man who built a guitar shaped like a surfboard and is pictured on his 1979 compilation, All of Me, giving a thumbs up while skydiving. Pure fun.

Tonight it’s infectious. With fans dressed in tropical shirts, couples clutching posters and the room hooting and hollering, Takanaka emerges in his custom red suit, sunglasses and black bow-tie to a hero’s welcome.

The room is jubilant from the opening of the zippy Blue Lagoon, jumping and singing riffs like it’s a football match. The incredible seven-piece band ham it up, pumping fists and grinning throughout. There’s an arm-waving singalong for Thunder Storm, a sultry cover of Santana’s Europa (Earth’s Cry Heaven’s Smile), the theme from Raiders of the Lost Ark, guitar solos while seated in a chair rolling across stage, and a keytar solo for set closer Kurofune (Kaei 6-nen 6-gatsu 4-ka).

When the band leaves, the chant begins: “Surfboard. Surfboard.” Finally Takanaka appears with his famous red surfboard guitar – a guitar built into an actual surfboard – for a rapturous Jumping Take Off.

“I was very happy to play guitar with your cheering voice,” said Takanaka before the finale. “See you soon and I hope peace and rainbows.”

To deafening cheers, the band rips into a triumphant You Can Never Come to This Place, and for the first time ever at The Forum, I see someone crowdsurf from the stage up to the back of the room. It’s Takanaka’s world – for one night we’re so happy to be living in it.
Reviewed by Marcus Teague

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