The flaw is Owen’s treating us a bit like Effie does Kev, when, to end, he spells out his themes of selflessness, resilience and equality. His play had done that.
MUSICALS
MJ The Musical
Sydney Lyric Theatre, until August 3
Reviewed by CHANTAL NGUYEN
★★★½
With a legacy as polarising as Michael Jackson’s, MJ The Musical will either delight or discomfort based on what you think of the late, great “King of Pop” and his astounding, troubled life.
Featuring a book by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Lynn Nottage and direction and choreography by ballet golden boy Christopher Wheeldon, MJ swept the Tony Awards and earned millions for its co-producers, who are also co-executors of Jackson’s estate and gave the musical their official blessing.
MJ’s premise is to separate Michael Jackson’s extraordinary artistry from the emotional baggage.Credit: Daniel Boud
It starts with a frame story set over two days in a tense, sweaty rehearsal studio on the eve of Jackson’s 1992 Dangerous tour. Tensions run high as Jackson’s adoring, protective staff (Derrick Davis, Wonza Johnson and Tim Wright) struggle to meet his exacting demands and boundless artistic imagination.
Two MTV reporters (Penny McNamee and Yashith Fernando) cajole their way into a rare interview opportunity. Jackson hesitates. “No matter what I do,” he says sadly, “It always gets twisted. I’ve been burned in the past. I want to keep this about my music.”
It’s an introductory cue – with as much subtlety as a foghorn – that MJ’s premise is to separate Jackson’s extraordinary artistry from the emotional baggage: his troubled personal life and the child abuse allegations that increasingly tarnished his name from 1993 (conveniently a year after MJ’s timeline).
Roman Banks gives a shape-shifting performance as the King of Pop.Credit: Rhett Wyman
His abusive father, Joe (a commanding Davis), is portrayed as the cause of his demons and his arrested development. MJ, in this musical, is a naive, almost saintly child-like figure, too brilliant and loving to be understood.
For Jackson fans, everything that follows will be pure joy. The interview slides into flashbacks of his early years singing with The Jackson 5, Motown, and Quincy Jones (Liam Damons and Will Bonner are both radiant as the younger Jackson).
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The gorgeous costumes, sliding neon lights and feel-good music are irresistible. Then come the rehearsal scenes: a choice jukebox selection of Jackson hits, with Roman Banks playing MJ in an extraordinary shape-shifting performance that channels Jackson at the height of his dance and vocal prowess.
You also won’t see a better ensemble: outstanding, explosive dancing with Wheeldon’s tightly edited, slick choreography, assisted by former Jackson dancers Rich and Tone Talauega.
It’s all so entertaining and well executed, and Jackson’s artistic legacy so powerful – even when performed by others – that audience members leapt to their feet screaming after each number, as if at a real Jackson concert.
But if you’re alive to the troubling allegations, this musical will feel at best like naive sanitisation and a missed opportunity to explore the deep complexities of Jackson’s legacy. At worst, in the words of the attorney for two of Jackson’s alleged victims, it will feel like propaganda.
THEATRE
THE DICTIONARY OF LOST WORDS
Roslyn Packer Theatre
March 5. Until March 22
Reviewed by JOYCE MORGAN
★★★½
From under a table in a scriptorium, a girl with insatiable curiosity watches a team of lexicographers undertake the mammoth task of compiling the Oxford English Dictionary and wonders why some words relating to women and the working class are discarded or ignored.
This swift return to the stage version of Pip Williams’ much-loved coming-of-age novel details the life of little Esme Nicholl growing up in a 19th-century world where men are the gatekeepers, including of language.
The production has an almost entirely different cast from its 2023 debut, including the main character, whose childhood is spent at her father’s feet as he works in the “scrippy”.
Johnny Nasser and Shannen Alyce Quanin in The Dictionary of Lost Words.Credit: Prudence Upton
It’s a tale in which a love of words is intertwined with questions of how language can exclude. Just as history is written by the victors, so the OED – the gold standard of the English language – was compiled by white, well-educated men. Some words were simply not in their lexicon. Bondmaid, for example.
It’s a sprawling story that covers more than three decades of Esme’s life, from late-Victorian Britain to World War I, against a background of enormous social change, especially in the rights of women. Verity Laughton’s adaptation stays faithful to the novel. Fans of the book will have no complaints.
But there’s a lack of dramatic tension in the transition from page to stage, particularly in the overlong first act. Lingering over poignant moments could have allowed greater room to breathe. In a play about words, sacrificing some would not hurt a show that runs for nearly three hours.
There are delightful aspects. A scene in an Oxford market is realised with a light touch and humour as potty-mouthed former sex worker Mabel teaches Esme a host of colourful words to add to her secret store of “lost” words she keeps in a suitcase.
The lexicographers’ oath of allegiance to whatever letter they are working on gets funnier each time they repeat it.
Jonathon Oxlade’s visually arresting set comprises a series of pigeonholes filled with books, slips of paper and flyers demanding women’s rights.
An elevated second stage utilises a screen that conveys dates, locations and other details. These aren’t pre-recorded projections but created live by cast members working in semi-darkness like puppeteers. The effect is beguiling and brings liveliness and charm to the Jessica Arthur-directed production.
Shannen Alyce Quan is a confident Esme as she transforms from an inquisitive four-year-old to a woman tempered by experience.
Among the strong eight-member cast playing multiple roles, Ksenja Logos stood out as Mabel, and Angela Nica Sullen impressed as the actress-turned-activist Tilda. Johnny Nasser is a benevolent figure as Esme’s widower father.
Ailsa Paterson’s period costumes were finely detailed, and Trent Suidgeest’s lighting brought a warmth to the look of the production.
This is a thoughtful piece about social change and the mutability of language, its gentle tone a welcome relief from the stridency of our world beyond the “scrippy”.
MUSIC
JAMES EHNES Performs Brahms’ Violin Concerto
Sydney Symphony Orchestra
Sydney Opera House, March 7
Reviewed by PETER McCALLUM
★★★★★
Luminous Ravel, titanic Brahms, a peerless violinist in soloist James Ehnes, and an emerging conductor of acute musical discernment, Finnegan Downie Dear, combined to create an utterly absorbing listening experience in the SSO’s first Symphonic Hour of the season.
Leading Ravel’s complete ballet Ma Mere l’Oye (Mother Goose) rather than the more familiar and shorter suite, Dear balanced the opening wind sounds of the Prelude to create magical textures of translucent calm, punctuated with vivid eruptions of colour, like exotic birds disturbed in an enchanted forest.
Soloist James Ehnes with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra.Credit: Cassandra Hannagan
The first tableau, Dance of the Spinning Wheel whirred with whispered energy before the Pavane of the Sleeping Beauty, and three more evocative interludes were added to the better-known movements to inject moments of glistening softness, rustling excitement and chirping vividness.
The final Apotheosis, The Magical Garden, summed up the experience of the whole work, starting with a quietly serene, texturally lustrous theme from the SSO strings, led by Andrew Haveron, then subtly adding gorgeous wind colours before erupting into a brief moment of intense iridescence at the close.
Although the weighty expressive purpose of Brahms’ Violin Concerto in D, Opus 77 belongs to a different world, Dear led it with the same exacting attention to balance and detail, creating tension and expectancy through carefully graded phrases. As soloist, Ehnes entered with steely power, towering over the orchestral texture with effortless gleaming strength and a tone of unblemished glow in Brahms’ restlessly striving textures with never a hint of unwanted bow noise.
Ehnes phrased the second theme, which Brahms saves for the soloist, with rewarding flexibility, avoiding exaggeration and allowing the music to flow like a mighty river of turbulent, arresting beauty. Shefali Pryor phrased the second movement’s oboe solo with a rewarding sound of coloured sweetness, and Ehnes embellished this and the ensuing ideas with expressive grace while retaining a firm underlying pulse.
In the finale, he cut through the orchestra with radiant tone and Olympian energy. The audience leapt to its feet after his first encore, an astonishing performance of Ysaye’s Third Sonata that evolved darkly and smoothly from near-silence to clamorous declamations, and were rewarded with Bach’s quietly contemplative Largo for the Sonata No. 3 in C.
MUSIC
ICE CUBE
Darling Harbour Theatre, ICC, March 7
Reviewed by JAMES JENNINGS
★★★★
Of all music genres, hip-hop is arguably the one that treats its elder statesmen the worst. Rappers are often considered “old school”, out of touch and washed up by the time they’re in their 30s, which makes 55-year-old Californian MC Ice Cube practically a dinosaur.
No stranger to bucking the system, the man born O’Shea Jackson gives hip-hop’s inherent ageism a defiant middle finger during this show, performing with an intense, fiery energy that would put rappers a third his age to shame. He gets the party well and truly started with the Funkadelic-sampling Bop Gun (One Nation); by the time he gets to another dancefloor filler, You Can Do It, more than an hour later, he’s lost none of his gusto.
Ice Cube gave hip-hop’s inherent ageism a metaphorical middle finger during this show.Credit: Aaron Leslie
Although the audience matches Cube’s energy throughout, things kick up a notch during an N.W.A mini-set, the LA native airing some of his former group’s biggest songs, including Dopeman, Straight Outta Compton and F— tha Police. (Solo diss track No Vaseline also gets a thunderous reception.)
Sitting either side of those hits is a well-curated set list that touches upon all corners of Cube’s close-to-four-decade career, from the ’90s (The Nigga Ya Love to Hate, Check Yo Self, You Know How We Do It), through to last year’s 11th album Man Down, which emulates Cube classics without quite transcending them (although Especially You, produced by Cube himself, is a thrilling, arena-rattling ’80s electro throwback).
The only time Cube overtly shows his age is on the recent single So Sensitive. The music may be classic West Coast funk, but some references to gender and pronouns skew dangerously close to making him seem like the kind of irate Boomer who writes incensed letters to tabloid newspapers.
He may need a new-school attitude in a few areas but as a performer, Cube is top-tier. His rapping is on beat and on point from start to finish, the stage visuals are top-notch, and his rebellious, “gangsta” persona is compelling enough to make you forget he’s a millionaire who has starred in several Hollywood films.
By the time Cube reaches the timeless classic It Was a Good Day, towards the end of the show, he’s left the crowd with ample proof he’s a true master on the mic, regardless of the advantages and deficits that come with being a rapper of a certain age.
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