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Desire is desire. Sacrifice is death. Revenge is violence. Justice is rebirth. Repeat.
Greek drama is heating up. It’s not just Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey: Robert Icke’s Oedipus went to Broadway this year after a successful UK season, with Simon Stone Simon Stone and The Oresteia it opened in London this month. Last month in Sydney David Wenham did It’s the Iliad at the Sydney Theater Company and now, at Carriageworks, we have Liza Lim’s work on Aeschylus’ blood revenge movement.
The opera is the best version of the old drama of the king who sacrificed his daughter to save his ship and win the war; the queen who plans for 10 years to kill her husband for that crime; and their son, Orestes, who kills his mother and is hunted down and executed by the Furies. How better to arouse emotion with the nervous system of grief, the hot madness of anger, than with the whole body?
In the Sydney Chamber Opera’s 1993 production of Lim’s opera, directed by Imara Savage, the singers’ bodies vibrate, vibrate, vibrate; Noises seem to come from within, vomiting and moaning, and chattering and gnashing teeth. Memory is to have; grief and exorcism. Dressed in black funeral clothes and pale as ghosts, they float on chairs and stagger around the funeral home. David Lynch’s Red Room through Stanley Kubrick’s Overlook Hotel and To quit: a purgatory of fluorescent lights and a low ceiling from which perhaps no one can escape.
Cassandra has been covered in the square in front of the room, who has seen what is happening, and in her mind or memory the drama is happening. Sitting on one side is a young woman in a white wedding dress and veil, looking on. His time will come.
Lim’s first opera, written in the 20s, is remarkable. It’s hard on the ears, yes; How else can you express the emotional truth of things than with confusing and conflicting words? But there are many passages of beauty and music, and a pleasant wilderness.
There are unusual instruments and sounds – electric guitar, Turkish saz (through a synthesizer in this production), metal pan – and familiar instruments that are played in unexpected ways (the electric guitar sounds like it’s speaking in tongues; the proud one is heard through his piccolo while playing). Voices are unexpectedly stretched and crushed and released with loud cries and moans, and bright cries.
These songs, of all things, are the most difficult to perform; but this production, by SCO’s Jack Symonds, gives you a front seat to sound and clarity. Carriageworks’ Bay 20 is small enough that you can watch the 11 members of the ELISION Ensemble as they play and sometimes sing. Likewise, the six singers, including SCO stalwarts Jane Sheldon, Jessica O’Donoghue, Simon Lobelson and Mitchell Riley, pull out all the stops, putting not only their vocal cords but their bodies on the line for a challenging and exciting performance.
None of this would work without the set, designed by Charles Davis and lit by Alexander Berlage, both masters of vivid and unsettling visuals. We need to be more involved in this world and the story. The art of this design is revealed when the furniture is scattered, the lamps flicker, and the red carpet tiles are peeled back to reveal the dirt on the floor. Bones will be dug up; the body will be buried. Flowers will grow on the grave. The Furies will be happy.
Lim and Barrie Kosky, who directed the first play, adapted Tony Harrison’s famous translation to shorten Aeschylus’ play to an hour – although those who have come out on the other side of the journey may find it hard to believe it was that short. If there’s one word of caution for viewers, it’s to get past the characters and the plot in advance; The libretto, like most chamber operas, is poetic and magical.
Post-Covid and in the midst of cost pressures, audiences and the theater industry have been very careful. Almost everywhere you look, the main sectors are safe areas, with innovations and changes in IP vendor names and marquees. New projects often lack food, lack development time and budget.
There are always brave artists who kill themselves to create works of vision slowly but the great works whose performance matches their ambitions are very few. This is one of them.
