La Traviata

LA TRAVIATA

Created by Sisters Grimm

Starring Ash Flanders, Zindzi Okenyo, Emma Maye-Gibson

Opera has unwittingly found itself back in the spotlight of late, but not quite as it may have hoped.

As the poster child for George Brandis’ National Program for Excellence in the Arts, it has become representative of the class divide in the arts world and beyond. Sisters Grimm have decided to wedge themselves smack bang in the centre of this division, along with an inflatable swan and too many flowers, and the result is the excitingly provocative La Traviata.

Ash Flanders, Zindzi Okenyo and Emma Maye-Gibson try their damnedest to sell us the concept of staging opera classic La Traviata in jeans. It doesn’t work, so they change tack and invoke the excesses of operatic staging. This also doesn’t work, so Maye-Gibson tries everything in her arsenal to get our approval. And when this, too, fails, the cast tears the whole thing down and appeal to us directly.

There’s a kind of structural unity to be found in the production’s intentions, but as soon as foundations are laid, they are cracked apart by the anarchic tendencies of Flanders and Sisters Grimm co-conspirator Declan Greene. Their loyalty is not to text or form, but to entertaining and inciting. They’re certainly more interested in asking questions than providing definitive answers.

But we didn’t come to this show for structural harmony – we came to see a classic get ripped a new one. We came to see main stage opera ferociously parodied in outlandish pastoral costumes. We came to see one of Australia’s premier opera performers, Michael Lewis, lip-sync La Traviata to cassette. We came to see Okenyo straddle a swan while slugging a tinnie. And we came to see Maye-Gibson exhaust herself in the show’s best moment, an impressive yet desperate attempt to appeal to the Brandis strictures of ‘excellence’.

There are times when this chaotic inquisition falls short – an early sequence in which the cast debates semantics reads too much as academia, like the arguments university students would stage. And there is a 15-minute sequence reliant on audience involvement that drops the energy and has the potential for disaster (though, thankfully, it stimulated complex and heartfelt responses on this night). The show’s emotional ending, however, leaves us stimulated and satisfied.

Overwhelmingly, the spirit of experimentation, radicalism and straight-up cheekiness pervades and keeps us glued to our seats (until we are physically removed from them). Even the foyer is not free from the Sisters’ commentary, as the show’s end reveals. It’s a reminder to take what we’ve seen and thought out into the world with us.

But it’s not opera. And if it’s not opera, can it really be excellent?

★★★★

La Traviata is playing at Belvoir St Theatre until Sunday September 20.

Post originally printed in The Brag, available at http://www.thebrag.com/arts/la-traviata