When you’re a pop star with so many hits, it’s tricky to make your B-sides land well but Lipa makes it look easy.
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Is it in the lights from the crowd’s phones at Anything For Love? The striking emotion in Lipa’s voice in Falling Forever? Or her natural chemistry with her band in Maria? These set-list underdogs make it clear that the songs between the hits are not an intermission, or a time for us to get lost in our phones.
For a show that could easily have been just a dance party, Lipa flexes a smartly paced set, and not even a missed line at the beginning of Illusion disrupts the good time.
From all the songs that really touch me, it’s the one that ends the show – Be The One – that has the biggest impact. In a full circle moment, the crowd still sings along 10 years (and many, many hits) into Lipa’s career. Of the song that started it all, she says: “I’ve been singing this since the very beginning and I’ll be singing this for the rest of my life.”
Reviewed by Gabriela Sumampow
MUSIC
The Heart of the Violin: James Ehnes ★★★★★
Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Melbourne Recital Centre, March 22
Possessed of an appealing and persuasive musical personality, Canadian violinist James Ehnes brought more than a touch of class to this chamber-style concert with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. As the MSO’s 2025 artist in residence, Ehnes both directed the orchestra and appeared as soloist in Mozart’s Violin Concerto No.4 in D (K. 218).
Violinist James Ehnes was compelling from the first note.Credit: File photo by Benjamin Ealovega
Each half of this concert opened with a work by American composer Jessie Montgomery. Strum, as the title suggests, featured pizzicato effects effectively woven together with bowed material to create ear-catching textures infused with harmonies reminiscent of Britten and Copland. Delivered with razor-sharp precision, it served as an impressive curtain raiser.
Propelled by motoric rhythms, Starburst, a brief explosion of musical energy, confirmed that Montgomery’s mastery of her craft makes her a composer to watch.
Compelling from the very first note, Ehnes’ account of the Mozart was a superb demonstration of the violinist’s art, where technique was always at the service of the music. The quasi-martial gestures of the opening came with both strength and lyricism. Slight issues of co-ordination were inconsequential in the face of the orchestra’s dedicated and stylish accompaniment.
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Tender beauty was the key element in the second movement; Ehnes’ beguiling cantabile still audible as he pared elements of the cadenza down to an absolute whisper. Relishing its rustic elements, soloist and orchestra brought the concerto to an ebullient conclusion.
Resuming his place in the leader’s chair, Ehnes led a headily romantic performance of Dvorak’s Serenade for Strings, Op. 22. As with the Mozart, elegantly tapered phrases and clearly etched rhythms advanced the musical narrative of this deservedly popular work. As usual, the acoustics of Elisabeth Murdoch Hall allowed the fine detail of inner parts to emerge.
On the strength of this wonderfully satisfying experience, Ehnes’ forthcoming MSO appearances will be eagerly anticipated.
Reviewed by Tony Way
THEATRE
Slay ★★★
Theatre Works Explosives Factory, until March 29
Horror is flavour of the month on Melbourne’s queer theatre scene. Last week it was the body horror and dystopian noir of Eva Rees’ trans thriller Djuna. This week it’s Slay, which has a group of young lesbians taking on the slasher genre.
Slay wields the blade of satire with a maniacal edge.Credit: Isabella Zettl
Borrowing unabashedly from the campiest, most self-referential stabfest in cinema – the Scream franchise – this piece of devised theatre wields the blade of satire with a maniacal edge.
If gender politics – and indeed all politics – have become something of a knife fight nowadays, Slay enters the fray well-armed. It’s intent on scything down reactionary forces, from retrograde views in the manosphere to TERF-y tendencies among some radical feminists, skewering its targets with wild abandon … and a satisfying quantity of onstage gore.
Four young queer women are implicated in the disappearance of another. The victim is known to Cora (Anita Mei La Terra), Ziggy (Raven Rogers-Wright), Jessica (Jackie van Lierop) and Valentina (Louisa Cusumano) – all friends who don’t get to enjoy being young and idle for long. Someone in a glittery ghost mask and flowing black robes is hunting them down one by one.
There are romantic complications – teen movie tropes abound – and political ones.
Slay is funny, subversive comedy horror.Credit: Isabella Zettl
The vanished woman was a member of SLAM (the Society for Lesbians Against Men), a new movement which repudiates patriarchy, asserts the inherent superiority of lesbians and their right to wield power, and calls for cis men to be reduced to 10 per cent of the population.
Their platform resembles SCUM Manifesto by Valerie Solanas, the radical feminist playwright who shot Andy Warhol in 1968, and the play has fun portraying – with a portentous, liturgical, almost cult-like quality – the dark pillars of their ideology from within, before unpicking their beliefs (and the misogyny they’re reacting to) in free-wheeling lampoons of online forums and performative YouTube panels.
SLAM is also discussed, more sanely, by the quartet of young friends, though sanity is a difficult thing to cling to when you’re being targeted by a deranged spree killer.
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Director Steph Lee was also behind a recent revival of Declan Greene’s Home Economics. Slay reminded me, in fact, of early Sisters Grimm, the queer indie company Greene founded with Ash Flanders a generation ago.
It has the same kind of outré flamboyance – one murder scene occurs on a Dance Dance Revolution machine, the victim and the perp busting moves to Nelly Furtado’s Maneater – and a similar sense of working through influences to explore novel possibilities and to develop an original style.
Slay doesn’t always slay, but it’s funny, subversive comedy horror – a Sapphic slasher that should amuse fans of the Scream movies and anyone disillusioned by the extremities of living in a hyper-polarised, terminally online world.
Reviewed by Cameron Wooodhead
MUSIC
Kehlani | Crash World Tour ★★★
John Cain Arena, March 18
The drums pound as the electric guitar soars. Kehlani starts to sing the opening bars to Next 2 U. As the stage lights flicker frenetically, the sheer curtain drops to reveal the 29-year-old American singer-songwriter as the crowd erupts into cheers.
Kehlani performs at Rod Laver Arena on March 18.Credit: Richard Clifford
The performer is touring their fourth studio album Crash across Australia and New Zealand. The album earned three Grammy nominations at this year’s awards, including Best Progressive R&B Album and Best R&B Song for After Hours.
Kehlani delivers a sexy R&B/soul set, with the electric guitar bringing a rock concert vivacity to the overall show. They sing about love and lust, playing off the charged energy of the guitarist and dancers.
The hip-hop choreography moves between sultry and dynamic, matching the energy of the track. Kehlani joins seamlessly into the routine throughout the show. A wind machine blows through Kehlani’s hair sporadically, making the production feel like a live music video.
Kehlani gives the performance everything.Credit: Richard Clifford
Like many international acts, Kehlani attempts to imitate the Australian accent – and does a pretty good job. Prompted by a fan’s sign featuring an invitation to go surfing together, they respond “y’all got sharks in the water”, in the local elocution.
The transitions between R&B, soul and rock work well, dialling up and winding down the intensity to create variation in the mood. In Gangsta, a track off the Suicide Squad soundtrack, the electric guitar amplifies as Kehlani writhes on the floor in front of the lead guitarist. They then transition to the Afrobeats and amapiano-infused track Tears from latest album Crash, a collaborative song with Nigerian singer-songwriter Omah Lay.
“Do you mind if I bring the energy down?” Kehlani asks, before launching into mellow track everything, off their third studio album Blue Water Road, and the single Honey.
“Y’all have one job, and it’s just to have f—ing fun,” Kehlani says early on
The performer gives everything they have to their onstage performance – but this spirit isn’t matched by the crowd. Kehlani does their best to bring the fire and sensuality of a club to the show, but fans in general admission remain quite stilted, preferring to capture footage on their phones.
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When Kehlani performs After Hours, the final song of the show, the crowd finally gets into the groove. Unfortunately, it’s a little too late.
The show ends abruptly with no encore. Earlier in the set, the singer promises to make a club appearance after the gig at Ms Collins (ironic, given they perform their single Hate the Club as part of the show). An anticlimactic end to the evening.
Reviewed by Vyshnavee Wijekumar
MUSIC
Yamen Saadi with Simon Tedeschi ★★★★
Melbourne Recital Centre, March 18
Yamen Saadi is a polished exponent of the Viennese style.
Fritz Kreisler was one of the 20th century’s great violin virtuosos and ensured his legacy would extend beyond his recordings by composing a host of popular miniatures that continue to round off many a violin recital.
Imagine the delight of Kreisler lovers when a program mostly devoted to his music is performed on one of the Stradivari violins he used to play – and the performer is none other than the young concertmaster of the Vienna Philharmonic, representing Kreisler’s birthplace.
Still in his 20s, Yamen Saadi is a polished exponent of the Viennese style and played the 1734 “Lord Amherst of Hackney” Stradivarius previously in Kreisler’s possession. Opening with the master’s signature work, the Prelude and Allegro, Saadi clearly delineated Kreisler’s quasi-baroque lines with brilliant technique and soaring tone.
Sensitively partnered with distinguished Australian pianist Simon Tedeschi, Saadi then presented Grieg’s Violin Sonata No.3 in C minor, a work often performed by Kreisler. Eliciting delicate colouring from the second movement and rhythmic energy from the finale, the duo brought a fair degree of dramatic interest to this youthful work.
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It was really in the remaining part of the program, given over to Kreisler’s miniatures, that a true sense of Saadi’s artistic flair was revealed. Kreisler’s arrangements of Brahms, de Falla and Albeniz were each given their own unique sensibility, flavoured by the multi-hued, sweet singing tone of the Strad.
Kreisler’s own La Gitana (with its Arabian influences referencing Saadi’s heritage), the Viennese March with its pianistic music box effects, the bittersweet Liebesleid and the lyrical Schön Rosmarin were all part of a polished Viennese charm offensive. As deftly characterised as all these were, it was only in the program’s encore that Saadi finally let loose a passionate torrent of expression for which the enthusiastic audience had been waiting.
Reviewed by Tony Way
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