Review by Greg Gorton
Lyric Opera has chosen to revisit the 2008 adaptation of Helen Garner’s literary masterpiece in a highly-polished production at Theatre Works. While the production offers an incredible opportunity to experience the operatic talent in our city, it has me scratching my head and asking “but why this one?”.
I am relatively new to opera. I couldn’t tell you if a singer was perfectly on key, and can only guess that yes, the score to this piece played on the conventions of a fugue. However, to my uneducated ears, this production included some very beautiful noises. The voices on stage were incredible, and when performers played off each other there was something magical in the sounds. One particular scene, between Juel Riggall’s Elizabeth and Chloe Taylor’s Poppy will likely stay with me for some time.
As performers, the cast of The Children’s Bach are perhaps the best I’ve seen in Melbourne opera. Each had a strong understanding of the character they were given to play, and are not the ones to be faulted for how superficial they might be. Again, I must say that Juel Riggall stood out here, with judging glances, over-confident posture, and a few moments of kindness. While she never stole a scene from another performer, for me she stole the show. Chris Touzel was also amazing as the young Billy, a role that could easily sneak into comedy if you were not careful.
The set and lighting design for The Children’s Bach is something that will blow your mind when first seen, but might leave you disappointed a little by the end. Eight “rooms” on two tiers of staging make up the bedrooms, dining rooms, hotel rooms, and even playgrounds of 1980s Australia. Each is beautifully laid out to capture the world and reflect the characters to whom they might belong. However, these spaces are often used in the least interesting ways possible and, while the production was happy to use front of stage for some scenes, two of the created spaces were only used once each. It had me wondering, “could that have been used for a better purpose?”.
The small chamber orchestra that Lyric Opera used was, in a word, amazing. With the little I know and can appreciate, I especially enjoyed the play between Helen Bower’s violin and Thomas D’Ath’s clarinet. Each performer pulled back and surged forward as their musical characters required, and I personally believe they took a decent composition and produced something beautiful.
For all the great elements of this production, I still can’t help but come back to the thing that most bothered me. Why do it at all? The 2008 reviews all concentrated on the thing I most enjoyed (Andrew Schultz’s incredible score and the performance of it), but for a lay enjoyer of live performance, or the lover of Helen Garner, I’m afraid there is much disappointment to be had.
I have to embarrassingly admit that I had never read Garner before this week, so in anticipation of this show, I decided to read the short novella it was based on. I am both glad and mortified that I did. The Children’s Bach might be the best piece of modern Australian literature I have ever read, and as an adaptation this opera is a travesty.
I did say “glad”. The reason is simple: the narrative, the characters, the basic structure of sentences, little of the production’s libretto will make sense if you haven’t read the book. If not for my knowledge, I’d still be asking “what was with the rabbit?” or “so why was Philip there?” I know that 90% of the words spoken were direct lines from the book, though cut and pasted like a kidnapper might from a magazine in order to create a ransom letter.
The most painful knowledge I harboured was how beautifully complex and detailed Helen Garner’s world is. Here, the morally grey characters have been shaved and bludgeoned until they fit caricatures of archetypes, one-dimensional people whose actions then don’t make entirely enough sense. The strong feminist motifs and themes have been stripped completely away (though could that simply be the inevitable result of two men being behind the adaptation?). The melodies of the opera do not come close to reflecting the melodic structures in the book, and the world of 1980s Australia was far better reflected by this production’s set and costume design than by anything found within the words on page.
If you are happy to sit through a terrible opera in order to experience incredible performers, I might be able to recommend The Children’s Bach. Should you go to the next production by Lyric Opera? You bet. Looking for your next masterpiece to read? Go and buy the book today. But if you are hoping to find a new operatic text to love, one you cannot wait to see performed again, you will be sorely disappointed.
Image Supplied
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