Any fan of Oscar Wilde should enjoy this salacious twist on his masterpiece

Still, juxtaposing a smutty, queer, turbo-charged Earnest with Wilde’s eventual fate, lampooning Victorian-era hypocrisy and showing how it destroyed him, is an inspired move. Any fan of Wilde should enjoy and be moved by the show.
Reviewed by Cameron Woodhead

THEATRE
English ★★★
By Sanaz Toossi, Melbourne Theatre Company, until August 29

Winner of the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, Sanaz Toossi’s comedy, English, probes the relationship between language, identity and power from a small school in Karaj, Iran.

Despite its gentle humour and its quiet insistence on the joys of finding your own voice in a new tongue, the play is shadowed by a harsh reality. No language has such exclusionary power as the lingua franca of the globalised world.

English was written in the wake of then-president Donald Trump’s 2017 “Muslim ban” – a series of executive orders which prevented travel to the United States, largely from countries with a majority Muslim population.

A racist and Islamophobic policy, yes, but it’s disingenuous to be shocked when Australia’s own discriminatory immigration practices weaponised language for decades. Lest we forget: under the White Australia Policy, an English “dictation test” was used to refuse entry to “undesirable” immigrants. If they spoke English well, the test was administered in a different language. After 1909, not one person passed it.

English language teacher Marjan (Salme Geransar) and her students have diverse reasons for learning English, but the ambivalences and complexities of migration touch all their stories.

There’s the bright young Goli (Delaram Ahmadi), whose carefree disposition, dramatic flair and willingness to make mistakes stand in stark contrast to the prickly and perpetually disgruntled Elham (Maia Abbas), who wants to study medicine in Australia and has failed the test multiple times.

Grandmother Roya (Marjan Mesbahi) wants to join her son in Canada, but laments that he loses his softness when he speaks in English rather than Farsi. And much to Elham’s annoyance, Marjan herself is moved to tentative flirtation with star pupil Omid (Osamah Sami), whose fluency at English raises suspicions about why he’s there.

The reason lies in an unexpected angle on the identity struggle facing those who live in two or more languages: the fact that you’re compelled to translate not just your words but yourself, in an authentic way.

The cast lets light comedy float on the surface, with episodes unfurling into drollness and poignancy. Director Tasnim Hossain could sharpen the performance style, however, with respect to classroom power dynamics, and it’s confusing to have characters switching between English and Farsi without changing languages (most switches are performed all in English) in the absence of a reliable visual or aural cue.

They’re quibbles, really. English clearly deserves its Pulitzer, and the contemporary American play it most reminded me of is Annie Baker’s Circle Mirror Transformation. In that one, intricate human portraits emerge from the comic artifice of theatre exercises at community drama class. Here, they rise from all those awkward role-playing and competitive language games that unfold in a foreign language classroom.

Anyone who’s ever tried to learn a new language will identify with the scale of the labor these loveable characters have undertaken.
Reviewed by Cameron Woodhead

JAZZ
Michelle Nicolle | Songs in the Key of W ★★★★
Primrose Potter Salon, Melbourne Recital Centre, August 3

Songs in the Key of W is Michelle Nicolle’s offering of thanks to some of the great women composers in jazz (and beyond). In the intimate Recital Centre Salon on Saturday, Nicolle and her specially assembled quintet presented familiar jazz standards alongside lesser-known songs and a handful of original compositions.

Even the most well-worn tunes feel fresh and personal when Nicolle sings them. She can embellish a melody or tug at the rhythm of a phrase without detracting from the meaning of a song, making us believe every lyric is her own.

Her arrangements for this new project, too, were subtle but extremely effective, making the most of the flexible two-horn front line (Angela Davis on alto sax and Jon Hunt on tenor sax and clarinet). At times, Nicolle would wrap wordless vocals around the woodwinds to form elegant three-part harmonies, before launching into a scat solo that displayed her remarkable vocal elasticity, sinking to a throaty swagger or slipping upwards to an astonishingly high note.

The evergreen Willow Weep For Me was imbued with a slightly world-weary quality, aided by a languid backbeat from Tom Lee (on bass) and Ronny Ferella (drums) as the song morphed into a soulful rendition of Joan Armatrading’s Willow.

Lee and Ferella – both members of Nicolle’s long-running quartet – mirrored the singer’s gestures, phrasing and energy with intuitive ease. Likewise, Davis and Hunt shone in graceful individual solos, but kept the focus on the overall mood of intimacy and quiet warmth.

Between songs, Nicolle chatted to us with characteristic humour and humility, introducing a selection of her own songs almost apologetically. Yet, her originals – some tender and wistful; others more propulsive and dynamic – were as appealing as any of the standards. It’s apt that in this celebration of female composers, audiences have a chance to appreciate the work of one of our own superb female talents, too.
Reviewed by Jessica Nicholas

THEATRE
King Lear ★★★
Bell Shakespeare, Arts Centre Melbourne, until August 11

Bell Shakespeare has a spotted history with King Lear. Veteran theatregoers won’t have forgotten the disaster of Barrie Kosky directing John Bell in 1998. The attempt to reimagine the tragedy as apocalyptic carnival was doomed to be a vaudevillian misfire, Kosky’s avant-garde vision clashing badly with Bell’s rather classical approach to Shakespearean acting.

Drawing inspiration from the austerity of Japanese performance traditions, Marion Potts overcompensated for Kosky’s misadventure in her elegant but dull 2010 effort, again with John Bell.
And the latest production, starring Robert Menzies as Lear, should be better than it is. Menzies is a very fine actor, and the air of haunted dishevelment about him is certainly no disqualification for the role.

In fact, looking like a Beckett character may be an advantage: King Lear is the closest Shakespeare comes to envisaging human extinction and, as critic Jan Kott noted, it prefigures absurdist drama.

Unfortunately, director Peter Evans short-changes the talent in his charge. Menzies’ Lear is a shadow of what it might yet become in firmer and more sophisticated hands. (The actor hasn’t hit 70, after all, and Lear claims to be a Joe Biden-like “fourscore and upward”.)

This Lear feels like a rehearsal for something more fully imagined and embodied. None can fault Menzies’ command of Shakespeare’s language. The cruelty and bitterness of the invective comes darkly alive; less experienced members of the cast should be using the performance as a masterclass on handling the technical aspects, such as scansion and enjambment, of verse drama.

Almost entirely forgotten is the physical dimension of the performance. Menzies sort of slouches through most of Lear, leaving his infirmity largely of the mind. And you don’t need a portrait of decrepitude as extreme as Kathryn Hunter’s half-dead monarch at the Globe two years ago, but we do have to believe that Lear is very old.

That’s one essence of the tragedy. “Age is unnecessary,” as Menzies’ Lear quips sardonically. The elderly are expendable.

Another crux is the fact that Lear is king of a deeply misogynistic world. He fears and hates the feminine – within himself, and in others – and he’s passed on the curse to his offspring. Cutting the worst of the mad king’s misogynistic ranting seems like a dramaturgical mistake.

The domestic drama from which political and existential crisis flows is smoother in the subplot with Gloucester (James Lugton) and his sons, Edgar (Alex King) and Edmund (Darius Williams), than it is between Lear and his daughters.

Melissa Kahraman’s Cordelia, Lizzie Schebesta as Goneril, and Tamara Lee Bailey’s Regan trace recognisable types but seem a little stranded in pre-conceived ideas to forge credible, individual human characters, and the staging sometimes diffuses, without cause, the intensity of the family conflict.

The uncaring world of the play is evoked through a circular set, above which the heavens themselves have stopped moving. It’s a sense of cosmic tragedy that this production, despite its virtues as a reasonable introduction to King Lear, ultimately fails to earn in performance.
Reviewed by Cameron Woodhead

DANCE
Little Murmur ★★★
Arts Centre Melbourne, until August 4

It was almost 10 years ago when British dancer Aakash Odedra, a protégé of the celebrated Akram Khan, created Murmur 2.0, an expansive solo exploring childhood experiences of dyslexia. The show, which was made with Australian choreographer Lewis Major, was a breakout success for Odedra’s company – touring widely and garnering much praise.

Murmur 2.0 has now been reimagined as Little Murmur, a shorter and more intimate version aimed at younger audiences. It translates the story of Odedra’s struggle into a series of evocative scenes suggesting feelings of confusion and helplessness, while also showing how dance, too, can be a positive mode of expression.

We are introduced to Kalli – dancer Kallirroi Vratti – who realised at the age of 21 that all her life, she had misspelled her own name. The struggle for control of her identity is then depicted through a neatly orchestrated combat between Vratti and a digital avatar projected onto a thin curtain.

In this contest, Vratti asserts her strength and agility, particularly in the energetic floorwork, drawing cries of appreciation from the young audience. The written language may be a struggle, but Vratti shows that there are other ways of saying who you are and showing what you can do.

The text used in this adaptation for families is a little too obscure and fragmentary. It’s possible that by addressing the audience more directly – rather than posing enigmatic questions that have no answer – Odedra could have established a more direct connection with those kids who, like he did, struggle with conventional schooling.

There is, nonetheless, much to admire in this pint-sized remake of a hit show.

The final extended scene is particularly enchanting. Sheets of paper fall from the ceiling and are then swept back into the air by a ring of fans, creating a kinetic image of bafflement in a whirling world of printed words.
Reviewed by Andrew Fuhrmann

JAZZ
Zela Margossian Quintet ★★★★
Bird’s Basement, July 27

Before Zela Margossian moved to Australia in 2008, she was immersed in the world of classical piano. But after years of intense classical studies – first in Lebanon, then in her native Armenia – the pianist was ready to forge a new path.

She took the plunge and transitioned to a career in jazz (hence the title of her debut album, Transition). Her latest album, The Road, celebrates the journey she’s been on since turning to jazz, while acknowledging that it has no definitive end point.

On Saturday night at Bird’s Basement, the pianist introduced us to the Sydney band that has shared much of this journey with her. The quintet has only performed in Melbourne a handful of times, and it was a full house that greeted them as they invited us into Margossian’s enchanting musical world.

At the heart of that world lie the pianist’s elaborate compositions, which weave together the myriad influences of her upbringing, cultural heritage and lived experiences.

Echoes of Armenian folk flit through her melodies, which can be hauntingly lyrical or urgently propulsive – sometimes within the same tune. Rhythm, too, plays a crucial role. On Saturday night, the band displayed extraordinary cohesion as they skipped nimbly across shifting time signatures, stop-start passages and polyrhythmic interludes.

Yet despite the complexity of Margossian’s writing, the musicians maintained a sense of effortless flow. Their instrumentation allowed for a kaleidoscopic array of colours and textures, with Stuart Vandegraaff switching between alto sax, soprano sax and clarinet, and Adem Yilmaz using a beguiling combination of Middle Eastern and Latin percussion.

At the piano, Margossian guided the band through her intricate arrangements while beaming with delight at the way her colleagues were bringing her musical visions to life. While most of the evening’s repertoire was drawn from Transition and The Road, the pianist also offered glimpses of material from a forthcoming album, reminding us that her creative journey is still unfolding.
Reviewed by Jessica Nicholas

DANCE
Ānanda: Dance of Joy ★★★★
Dancehouse, July 25

Soloist Christopher Gurusamy describes his latest program of contemporary Bharatanatyam as a celebration of the search for freedom through the discipline of classical dance. And it’s an unapologetically joyful experience.

Gurusamy opens the two-hour recital with a piece on the origins of the universe, inspired by the famous Hymn of Creation of the ancient Rigveda. It is his most innovative and experimental piece – and his most personal.

With its thrilling use of light and darkness, small movements and large, it’s a wonderfully theatrical creation. The total impression is less that of a human being dancing than a cosmic process unfolding, forms becoming, rising from formlessness.

For the second item, Gurusamy chooses a sprightly varnam in Nattakurinji ragam, set to adi talam, composed by Papanasam Sivan. As a dance of joy addressed to Shiva, lord of the dance, this epic story of desire is really the centrepiece of the evening.

This long but utterly engrossing devotional piece, also choreographed by Gurusamy, with dramaturgy by the celebrated teacher Bragha Bessell, shows off his remarkable agility, with spring-heeled lateral leaps, lightning lunges and ballistic footwork.

After the interval, Gurusamy performs a series of intimate shorter pieces in which he connects abhinaya – the expressive aspect of dance, where the dancer conveys emotions, moods and stories through facial expressions and hand gestures – with his own life experiences.

He offers stories – choreographed by Bessell – of a dancing girl on her way to meet her lover, a woman waiting in her chamber for the return of her lover and a great elephant who is bashful about meeting his old lovers after a long absence.

The exuberant finale, Thillana, commends the pure athletic pleasure of combining melody and rhythm as dance. It highlights the contemporary inflection in Gurusamy’s work, the energy which gives his performances such a feeling of generous cosmopolitanism.
Reviewed by Andrew Fuhrmann

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