BY HOLLY CHAMPION
Candide
Sydney Philharmonia Choirs and Sydney Youth Orchestra
Sydney Opera House, 29 September
The Sydney Philharmonia Choirs and Sydney Youth Orchestra were in fine fettle this September at the Sydney Opera House Concert Hall for the first of their performance of Bernstein’s famously difficult and fabulous satirical operetta Candide.
Director and well-known actor/singer Mitchell Butel managed to arrange a semi-staged version that far outstripped my expectations. Despite a shoestring budget – with many costumes seemingly recycled from other shows I have seen around Sydney, and a bare-bones set of a few light-filled boxes – this show simply sparkled: with wit, vivacity, sexiness, political satire, postmodern frame-breaking galore, hilarious slapstick, and camp carryings-on.
There was also some wonderful musicianship. The choirs and orchestra were tight and responsive to the rambunctious yet sensitive baton of SPC artistic director Brett Weymark. They sang cleanly, without any of the warbling or bleating that often mars amateur choirs. They enthusiastically got into the spirit of Butel’s directorial demands for them to cry out, wave, dance in their seats, and (you could really tell they enjoyed this bit) to strip off their concert blacks to reveal bright Hawaiian shirts for the auto-da-fé scene. The final chorale Make Our Garden Grow was a glorious, genuinely uplifting end to the show’s litany of hilarious horrors.
The leads were a mix of professional musical theatre, opera, and crossover artists. As an opera director friend of mine commented wryly before the show: ‘The trouble with Candide is it requires opera singers who can move and act like musical theatre performers.’ To be truthful, though, only a few of the roles really need operatic voices. Caroline O’Connor does not seem to have one – but this Australian Broadway star fully justified her top billing by singing with aplomb, dancing with spirit and energy, and generally giving a riotous, high-octane turn as Bernstein’s Old Lady. (Sorry – I mean the ‘still very hot lady’, as Phillip Scott, our Pangloss/Voltaire corrected.) Scott, a veteran cabaret performer, delivered what seemed to me a vocally weaker performance but was nevertheless effective. Kanen Breen did his usual very funny, very vocally and physically on-point Kanen Breen thing in pink satin and, later, comic drag and falsetto as the vain, spoiled Maximilian. Young tenor Nicholas Jones pulled out all the stops as the Baron and a host of other small roles, while Adam Player gave us some wonderful operatic tenor moments. Katherine Allen and some Pacific Opera young artists filled out the other roles beautifully; and the two leads provided perhaps the most necessarily operatic singing. Alexander Lewis starred as the titular character and Annie Aitken as his materialistic love interest Cunegonde.
I could wax lyrical about Lewis’ ability to make his audience swoon, but I will refrain. He is, however, a very fine triple-threat, with a focus on his lovely lyric tenor voice, which has afforded him many international opera engagements as well as crossover and musical theatre work. He was formerly a baritone, and retains that depth and richness to his tone. If I were to make any criticism of his performance as Candide, it was that it lacked a little dramatic variety. As in The Merry Widow for Opera Australia earlier this year, Lewis was again the heroic, dashing, vocally vibrating, British upper-class romantic hero; but Candide’s earnestness was not offset by Danilo’s louche, jaded wit. This Candide was simply an eternally optimistic man (well… boy, in shorts and long socks) amid a menagerie of much more colourful and rapacious characters. I hope that he will do something slightly more thought-provoking character-wise as Tony for Opera Australia’s West Side Story next year, which I am eagerly anticipating.
Cunegonde is a slightly more complex character, and notoriously difficult to cast – it requires a very strong coloratura soprano with the ability to move, flirt outrageously, find a balance between sweetness and gross superficiality, and make the audience laugh in spite of, or because of (and this theme was really quite painful in the age of #metoo) the character’s frequent unwanted ‘ravishments’ by various odious men. But Aitken was simply delightful, and Glitter and Be Gay was the pyrotechnical showstopper it ought to be, receiving raving applause. It took rather a little too much inspiration from Kristen Chenoweth’s famous turn in the 2005 Lincoln Center concert production (watch the clip, as no doubt Butel did – millions of views on YouTube) but Aitken actually has a much fuller, lovelier voice than Chenoweth and comes close to her in terms of comic timing and charismatic appeal. Only graduating from the Victorian College of the Arts a few years ago, she is already forging a wonderful career and I look forward to watching this star rise.
The real test of a Candide is whether or not you go away with a naughty, satirical sparkle in your eye and a spring in your step, humming the many hummable, if tricky, tunes. This production passed with flying colours. I am so disappointed that they only gave two performances, with the second as the Sunday matinée — too soon for me to get this review out! So I could encourage more people to catch this gem. It really lived up to what Candide can, indeed, be.
Images supplied. Credit: Grant Leslie.
