Grey Gardens at fortyfivedownstairs; Keys to Life by Jayson Gillham and Iyad Sughayer; Oehlers / Grabowsky / Svoboda / Beck at The Jazzlab; Pretty Woman the Musical at Regent Theatre; Rabbit & Watson by Darebin Arts Speakeasy; The Australian Ballet on Tour – The Nutcracker Act II and other works

THEATRE
Grey Gardens ★★★★★
Clovelly Fox, fortyfivedownstairs, until August 2

The fine line between exploitation and empowerment has always been muddied in the case of “Big Edie” and “Little Edie” Beale, a mother and daughter whose fall from the heights of America’s elite was made infamous by the 1975 cult classic documentary Grey Gardens.

Once scions of the upper class, the Beale women fell into disrepute, poverty and squalor in a crumbling 28-room mansion in East Hampton. That they were aunt and cousin respectively of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis only accentuated the mystique of their unthinkable predicament.

Debates over whether the celebrated documentary is exploitative and makes victims of the pair have raged since its release, and the 2006 Tony Award-winning Broadway musical Grey Gardens, currently being staged at fortyfivedownstairs, plays in this grey area.

Were the Beales a transgressive pair of iconoclasts punished by the repressive social mores of the time, or was their fall the result of mental illness and trauma? Was their relationship one of deep and profound love, or a toxic co-dependency that killed their every chance of happiness?

The musical is cleaved in two. Set in 1941, the first half is an almost entirely fictionalised precursor to the two women’s isolation, taking place over the course of a single fateful day. The second half transports us 32 years into the future into the more familiar territory traversed by the documentary.

Under Tyran Parke’s expert direction, the tale unfolds with a bubbling undercurrent of dread. Prone to bursting into song and scorned by her father (an imposing David Hobson) and husband alike, Big Edie (the mercurial Helen Dallimore) is preparing for her daughter Little Edie’s (a coquettish, bewitching Meg Williams) engagement to a sneer of a Kennedy (Luke Ward). Grey Gardens is at the height of its splendour – a sprawling manor serviced by servants and clamoured over by socialites – but the day won’t unfold as any of them plan.

Big Edie was a singer, which makes the musical treatment of Grey Gardens all the more poignant. Composer Scott Frankel and lyricist Michael Korie’s songs are both the embodiment of her societal disobedience and a vehicle – brought to the fore by Dallimore’s stunning voice – through which her thwarted dreams, vicarious transference and barely concealed envy are materialised. The Beales are never romanticised; they’re products of their time, accurately represented by the racist ditties that Big Edie guilelessly recites.

When we rejoin mother and daughter decades later, the set has been transformed; grandeur into clutter, and spectres of the pair’s past loom over the present as ghostly apparitions of characters from the first half.

Dallimore plays the increasingly unhinged Little Edie in an effective simulation of how the past is constantly imprinting itself upon the present and Deidre Rubenstein is Big Edie, ever sonorous but made increasingly desperate by the indignities of ageing.

It’s in the apoplectic exchanges between Dallimore and Rubenstein that Grey Gardens conjures the spectacular cruelty innate to many mother-daughter relationships, and the diminishment Little Edie inflicts on herself to avoid being belittled any further by her emotionally manipulative, increasingly cantankerous mother.

Grey Gardens strips away the artifice of the crumbling detritus that governed so much of these two women’s lives in favour of something starker, bleaker and darker. There are no easy answers in this elegiac reimagining, but what we’re left with as the haunting melody of The Girl Who Has Everything is reprised one final time is the sheer tragedy of unfulfilled potential, unrealised futures and unrepentant love.
Reviewed by Sonia Nair

MUSIC
Keys to Life ★★★★
Jayson Gillham and Iyad Sughayer, Melbourne Recital Centre, July 19

In his first Australian performance after losing his unfair dismissal case against the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, pianist Jayson Gillham made no comments about the recent events. Sunday night’s collaboration with friend and fellow pianist Iyad Sughayer demonstrated not only superb artistry but the non-verbal potency of music.

Unmistakeably radiating the joy of making music together, Gillham and Palestinian-Jordanian Sughayer (making his Australian debut), displayed a finely honed artistic synergy.

Such synergy imbued the impressionistic works on the program with a nuanced sense of colour and an admirable flexibility of line. Debussy’s Petite Suite conjured up an idyllic innocence, while Ravel’s Introduction and Allegro revelled in a more abstract voluptuousness. Mozart’s Sonata for Two Pianos in D major, K. 448 provided a perfect contrast; the elegance of the music matched by the crystalline elegance of the performance.

The duo’s impressive versatility effectively captured the various guises of Khachaturian’s rhythmic modernism in his Three Pieces for Two Pianos.

Receiving its premiere, Isolated by Palestinian-Lebanese composer Houtaf Khoury was conceived, he writes, “in a very difficult time…isolated from the peace world and positive vibes”. Also noting “there is always a way to get out from the tunnel”, Khoury’s optimism clearly percolates through this highly personal score with its oblique reminiscences of the bell-like and subaquatic world of Debussy’s Submerged Cathedral.

Gillham and Sughayer unashamedly delighted in the old-fashioned Russian pianism of Anton Arensky’s Suite for Two Pianos No. 1, giving a bravura account, confirming the composer’s intention of putting Chopin’s style on steroids. A rhythmically and melodically infectious account of Chabrier’s Espana provided an ebullient finale before an encore filled with delicate nostalgia: The Fairy Garden from Ravel’s Mother Goose Suite.

Before an enthusiastic and near-capacity audience, Gillham and Sughayer eloquently demonstrated how powerfully music can reach beyond words. The challenge for all artists is to trust in that power.
Reviewed by Tony Way

JAZZ
Oehlers / Grabowsky / Svoboda / Beck ★★★★
The JazzLab, July 19

The powerhouse quintet that was booked to perform at JazzLab on Sunday shrank to a quartet at late notice, when one player (trumpeter Paul Williamson) pulled out of the gig due to illness.

Fortunately, the other four players are all masters at thinking on their feet, open to – and inspired by – unpredictability and moment-to-moment adaptation.

Indeed, Perth-based saxophonist Jamie Oehlers chose the players for this concert specifically for their sense of adventure. His compositions are designed to be interpreted rather than slavishly reproduced from charts. So while the absence of one instrument led to some swift reworkings of arrangements just before the gig, there was no sense of anything missing from the music.

Oehlers has a decades-long association with pianist Paul Grabowsky and drummer Dave Beck, lending their interactions the ebb and flow of an open-ended conversation where trust is key and each participant’s contribution is equally valued.

Bassist Helen Svoboda was the “newcomer” in this setting, having never worked with Oehlers before. Yet she was able to slip into these musical conversations with unflappable ease, even while navigating angular melodies, shifting time signatures and unexpected rhythmic fillips.

On Nostalgia, her arco bass glided beneath Oehlers’ swirling arpeggios and Grabowsky’s tempestuous ripples, spliced with bursts of fidgety, free-form commentary: percussive popping, abstract chords, spidery harmonics and scraped cymbals.

Saturday in Central Park was set to a brisk, boppish strut, interspersed with lighter interludes and an occasional splash of Latin cross-rhythms, before melting into a delicate coda of hushed, almost hymnal beauty.

And on Anthem (the night’s final number), Beck coaxed the band into a laid-back swagger with an increasingly heady backbeat, all four players – and the audience – revelling in the languid groove to bring the show to a soulful, deeply satisfying conclusion.
Reviewed by Jessica Nicholas

MUSICAL THEATRE
Pretty Woman: The Musical ★★★
Regent Theatre, until September 13

Pretty Woman was always going to be hot property as far as movie-to-musical adaptations are concerned. Its gender and class politics might be icky – perhaps inevitable when you rework Cinderella into a yuppie fantasy that hinges on the so-called “hooker with a heart of gold” trope – but the 1990 film with Julia Roberts and Richard Gere remains one of the most bankable Hollywood rom-coms of all time.

The cha-ching is only fitting. Although the story does make weak gestures towards pretending otherwise, money is the real love language of Pretty Woman. Its cultural influence relies at least as much on celebrating conspicuous consumption – the Rodeo Drive shopping scenes, the fabulous frocks and fast cars, and the opulent banquets with too many forks – as it does on the romantic chemistry of the leads.

For fans of the movie, this musical adaptation has its finger pressed firmly on the nostalgia button in a way that should put bums on seats. Almost all the iconic looks and scenes are resurrected, and short of bringing Roy Orbison back to life, you couldn’t ask for better music.

Songs from Canadian songwriting duo Bryan Adams and Jim Vallance range from a base of ’80s-style soft rock ballads, with strong melodies and a romantic charge.

While the score isn’t always doing enough dramatic work, it does unleash vocal pyrotechnics, and occasionally a rock concert vibe that compensates for some of the looser stage business.

Chemistry is integral to making the fairytale fly, and Samantha Jade and Ben Hall are both charismatic and well-matched vocally. They create intimacy, and even a few tasteful erotic scenes that don’t look silly, even if they’re a bit hamstrung in replicating the dynamic from the film.

Jade gives a pocket-rocket performance of the Julia Roberts role; Hall cops most of the show’s cringe moments, suddenly bursting into song in the Richard Gere part – an uneven performance, though, to be fair, Jade’s extroverted naif is easier to reconcile with the artifice of musical theatre than an introverted male lead.

The supporting cast includes a larger-than-life comic contribution from Michelle Brasier as Vivian’s wisecracking bestie Kit, and a versatile one from Tim Omaji as a homeless man and a classy hotel manager. Douglas Hansell has the unenviable task of playing a nasty corporate lawyer – a character responsible for a troubling late plot point involving attempted sexual assault.

It’s a reminder that gender politics have changed since Pretty Woman first appeared, though that isn’t, in the end, the show’s chief stumbling block.

That comes from various aspects of the craft not being in service to one another, from the sense of a show that doesn’t wield musical and dramatic art to create something greater than the sum of its parts.

Pretty Woman has entertaining sequences, some memorable music, and fans of the movie should enjoy the nostalgia hit. Yet it does feel overstretched as a full-length musical – and could have been trimmed into a play with songs or performed as a staged concert without losing much.
Reviewed by Cameron Woodhead

THEATRE
Rabbit & Watson ★★
Darebin Arts Speakeasy, Northcote Town Hall, until July 26

Chinese folk religion and homophobia in the AFL make uneasy bedfellows in this cross-cultural queer rom-com. Emerging playwright Shane Woon takes Tu’er Shen – the Rabbit God from Chinese legend, known as a gay matchmaker and patron deity of homosexual love – and thrusts him into a world of closeted young footy players.

Originally a soldier from Fujian who fell in love with a handsome Ming official, Tu’er Shen was, according to legend, caught perving on his beloved and subsequently executed for it. He was transformed into Rabbit (Sean Yuen Halley), the celestial protector of same-sex lovers – although each time his own beloved is reincarnated, Rabbit falls head over heels again and neglects his duties, with chaotic results.

This time, the wheel of reincarnation has landed on a talented dreamboat of an AFL player named Watson (Anton Pan-Cassin). Watson has come out to his “stereotypical Asian mum” (played with an exaggerated sense of fun by Dr Cindy Pan), who’s ambitious for him and tremendously spiky about his growing affection for Rabbit.

As love blossoms and Watson’s career belatedly takes flight, Rabbit begs the aid of other celestials – the Monkey God (Jesse Vasiliadis) famed from Chinese classic Journey to the West, and Guanyin, Goddess of Mercy.

But Watson isn’t the only one struggling against homophobia in the AFL, and Rabbit’s distraction falls hard on others (Charlie Morris, Gabriel Partington) involved in the game.

Will this centuries-old romance finally get a happy ending?

Rabbit & Watson is at its best in epical and comedic modes and opens with elaborate pageantry. A spectacular lion dance sees two Chinese lions with laser-green eyes roaring to life, leaping and cavorting around the stage, accompanied by riotous percussion.

The show’s sense of camp also serves it well – notably in Pan’s mischievous performance, and amusing touches brought to the courtship between the romantic leads.

I suppose I would have liked to see more heated rivalry (or chemistry, or something) between them. It’s a same-sex love as chaste as the moon, and the Boy Love cultural influence should perhaps have made it a little raunchier. All that yearning deserves a payoff.

Yet it’s the AFL stuff that produces the most dispiriting theatre. Both racism and homophobia remain serious issues in professional sport. That isn’t an excuse to oversimplify, or to beat audiences over the head with them, and the acting is so wooden, the characterisation so thin, and the dialogue so pedestrian in many of these scenes, that the show risks trivialising, or imprecisely diagnosing, the problems it seeks to highlight.

It’s all rather dull and coarsely observed compared to the mythical love story, interferes with the colourful sense of picaresque, and distends the show to around two hours without interval.

The good news is that there’s enough promising material here for a charming queer epic. But I fear only a substantial rewrite could cut out the dead dialogue, refocus the dynamics on the rom-com fantasy, and clarify and distil exposition (including through nonverbal aspects of theatrical storytelling) to avoid substantial longueurs.
Reviewed by Cameron Woodhead

DANCE
The Nutcracker Act II and other works ★★★
Bunjil Place, until July 18

Who would have thought the Australian Ballet would emerge as a key supporter of Melbourne’s independent dance scene? Well, it has – just look at its touring program, which in recent years has provided a valuable platform for the creation of new contemporary dance works.

Last year, the company took on a new work by Lucy Guerin: the wonderful Ground Control. And this year we get not one but two premieres – by Sandra Parker and Stephanie Lake – and both are very strong.

But the program is not all contemporary. It begins with company members Hugo Dumapit and Larissa Kiyoto-Ward in the glittering, exacerbated classicism of the Tchaikovsky Pas de Deux. Kiyoto-Ward is crisp and sure-footed, while Dumapit has an impressive leap.

Then we fall into the austere, highly prescriptive world of Parker’s We Dance. This is a work for four dancers built from short but suggestive phrases, chiselled poses and densely organised sequences all performed with extreme largo.

With its repetitions and exhausting variations, the work recalls Samuel Beckett’s late choreographies, while the hostile soundscape intensifies the sense of interminable crisis. Some may wonder if the title is ironic, but for me, this is bleakness of the most thrilling kind.

Stephanie Lake’s Chrysalis deploys a large Australian Ballet School ensemble in a very different mode. Kinetic, comic and pop, it sends dancers in striking red costumes scurrying insect-like across the stage. The duets and trios are a little rough but the larger massed effects are great.

After the interval, we enter the Kingdom of Sweets for the second act of Paul Knobloch’s version of The Nutcracker. Sara Andrlon and Jeremy Hargreaves bring a mature assurance to the Sugar Plum Fairy and her Prince, with Hannah Sergi as the Floral Fairy and Yaru Xu as Clara.

There is a bit of whiplash in the transition from the dim monasticism of We Dance to The Nutcracker’s candyfloss skies and giddy smiles, though the creepy fun of Chrysalis, squeezed between them, provides a kind of bridge.

The tour continues through Albury, Ballarat, Horsham and beyond.
Reviewed by Andrew Fuhrmann

The Booklist is a weekly newsletter for book lovers from Jason Steger. Get it delivered every Friday.