Hold the stodge: This Christmas offering is exquisite

The Song Company
Pier 2/3, Walsh Bay Arts Precinct
December 12
Reviewed by PETER McCALLUM
★★★★

Like a discerningly selected festive table, The Song Company’s, Hark!, devised by Artistic Directors Amy Moore and Jessica O’Donoghue, was filled with gems, rarities and an absence of stodge.

The theme was joy and that old deceiver/beacon (delete as appropriate) Hope, bound together musically by exquisite performances of each of Francis Poulenc’s 4 Motets pour le temps de Noel (4 Motets for Christmas time) spread across the five brackets.

Even if you don’t like Christmas pudding, it was worth attending to hear those pieces sung with such translucence and subtlety. The first of those motets O magnum mysterium begins with warm lower voiced harmonies which lay a bed for an imploring soprano entry.

That bracket began with Arvo Part’s O Morgenstern, which combined chant-like lines in different keys to create incidental dissonance expressive of wonder and pain. Lachlan McDonald’s arrangement of the old Basque carol, Gabriel’s Message, moved from a simple harmonisation to a more elaborate final verse in which the melody was sung in slow notes in the bass against swirling melismatic polyphony above.

Fiat Lux by Australian composer Alice Chance, for two sopranos and alto (Amy Moore, Susannah Lawergren and Jessica O’Donoghue), started with low expectant sighs, moving from half-light to an open, but not blazing sound, as though the Lord wanted to warm people rather than blind them.

Bob Chilcott’s The Shepherds’ Carol had simple purity of sound before lighter, more animated sway in Poulenc’s second motet Quem vidistis pastores dicite. Peter Knight’s charming arrangement of Ariel Ramirez’ La Peregrinacion continued the lilt with gentle delicacy.

For the bracket devoted to Mary as Mother, Gabriel Jackson’s O Virgo virginum drew a bold, resplendent sound from tenor Timothy Reynolds against soft chords from the others. For me, the anonymous setting of There is no rose of swych vertu for three female voices (no date was given but the cadence style and harmony suggested the 15th Century) was the highlight of the evening for its soft transparent charm.

Oliver Tarney’s Balulalow moved in smooth harmonies that drifted off into dissonance as though in a dream, while Judith Weir’s Ave Regina Caelorum engaged with a weightier solemnity before opening out to a radiant soprano solo at the close. Poulenc’s Hodie Christus natus est progressed to cheerful liveliness while Jacques’ arrangement of Away in a Manger used an old Normandy tune in the phrygian mode that was more haunting than the better known one. David Yardley’s This Holy tym gave bass Andrew O’Connor an opportunity to display his talents as a cross-metric drummer, followed by a carol medley.

Poulenc’s final motet Videntes Stellam began with beautifully pitched, high caressing chords while Joseph Twist’s On the night train used denser diatonic harmonies to explore the metaphor of a train trip in which the “Mother-bush” is a constant presence.

For Amy Moore’s arrangement of Juan Garcia de Zespedes’ Convidando esta la noche the rhythmic energy moved up a notch before a more subdued arrangement by Ruth McCall of We wish you a merry Christmas, apparently sung amid whistling wind.

The theme of hope took a slight dent with the news of Create NSW’s inexplicable decision to discontinued funding The Song Company – the doyen of Australian vocal ensembles - in 2026. Hopefully, this won’t push Christmas 2026 too far into the bleak midwinter.

THEATRE
A CHINESE CHRISTMAS
KXT on Broadway, December 13
Until December 20
Reviewed by JOHN SHAND
★★★

There’s no flashback as delightfully disorienting as an unreliable one. Trent Foo uses the device repeatedly in his debut play. The spiral of realities is made all the giddier by Foo also playing the protagonist Heepa, so Foo’s character is arguing about the veracity of what Foo, the playwright, has written.

The flashbacks come in the context of the orphaned Heepa visiting the underworld, with the audience members becoming his ancestors. He’s done this because he’s hosting the family Christmas party for the first time, to be attended by massed relatives, Chinese and white, although not by his dear Paw Paw (grandmother), with whom he’s fallen out. He wants we ancestors to change her mind.

Heepa’s guide or custodian in the underworld is Lady Dai, the famed Chinese noblewoman from 2200 years ago, who says little verbally and much musically. She’s played by Jolin Jiang, who also composed the music that she plays on string and percussion instruments. Often diaphanously beautiful in itself, the music’s not only an underscore, but a signifier of moments of magic or wonderment, aided by Cameron Smith’s sound design and Cat Mai’s lighting.

Heepa’s flashbacks explore the shifting dynamic between himself and his Paw Paw, with Tiang Lim captivating as the latter. She, too, says little, and she emotes less, while conveying the stern-faced, undemonstrative love she feels for Heepa. When a given flashback ends, and he argues that this was not what happened, we slowly come to understand that it is not the underworld playing tricks on him, but his own memory. So it’s partly a play about dawning self-awareness.

Foo’s playwriting craft is sound, his imagination better and his performance endearing, and debut director Monica Sayers has astutely blocked the show for KXT’s traverse stage. There are missteps, however. When we arrive, the stage is littered with covered boxes and props, the latter gradually contributing to Heepa’s decoration of an A-frame stepladder “Christmas tree” across the play’s 70 minutes.

But the constant rearrangement of the boxes becomes fussily obsessional, just giving him something to do while he delivers what essentially is a monologue. It’s tricky because the character of Heepa is hyperactive, and so a stillness to mirror Lady Dai’s would not work, yet the boxes become a distraction from the words.

Perhaps there could have been more of the charming level of invention as when Heepa and Paw Paw are in a car consisting of two chairs, a round stool as the steering wheel and the bristles of a broom as the rearview mirror.

A proportion of the play is intended to be funny, but little of the humour strikes the mark. Infinitely more successful is the point it makes: that there are few more critical lessons in life than learning to tell someone you love them before they die, not living in a world of regrets afterwards.

MUSIC
Sydney Philharmonia Choirs – Bach’s Christmas Oratorio
Opera House, December 13
★★★★
Reviewed by PETER MCCALLUM

Bach’s Christmas Oratorio is replete with musical glories but presents a quandary for modern performance.

Bach wrote the work as six cantatas for performance on separate Christmas Feast days, a mode of presentation which is only meaningful in a liturgical context. Yet the modern habit of presenting all six cantatas one after another creates a longish concert and sometimes dampens the concentrated focus that each deserves. The Philharmonia’s solution of splitting the oratorio over two separate Christmas seasons (2023 and 2025) and separating the cantatas with new Australian works was effective.

After Deborah Cheetham Fraillon and Matthew Doyle’s Acknowledgement of Country, Tarimi Nulay – Long Time Living Here, conductor Elizabeth Scott led the opening chorus of Part IV, Fallt mit Danken, fallt mit Loben in a tempo of lilting complacency (using that word as Jane Austen did, rather than as a derogatory term).

Tenor John Longmuir, who took the narrative role of the Evangelist, brought a sense of drama and robust strength to the part, opening out splendidly in Part VI, without making the role operatic. Baritone Christopher Richardson sang the recitatives with Chorale Immanuel, o susses Wort! and Wohlan dein Name with rounded pure vowels giving his tone an aura of poised dignity.

In the echo aria, Flosst, mein Heiland, soprano Jacqueline Porter projected a richly coloured, discreetly thrilling sound, blending with oboist Alexandre Oguey and organist David Drury to create refined chamber music, while the two ‘echo’ musicians, soprano Briar Babington and oboist Eve Osborn contributed distant imitations from behind the choir.

Concertmaster Fiona Ziegler and sister Leone Ziegler played the concerto-like violin solos in Longmuir’s aria Ich will nur dir zu Ehren leben with persuasive rhythmic fluency. A characteristic of Part IV is the addition of French horns in the outer movements, which bathed the clear sound of the Philharmonia Chamber Singers in burnished warmth for the final chorale.

Following this, Australian composer Phillip Cullen used Kipling’s poetry and quotations from Bach’s Part V for his new choral work A Nativity. With smoothly finished phrases and well-wrought traditional harmony, it began with a mournful plaint on cor anglais and ended with the choral lines haloed in high harmonics from solo violin.

Scott’s leadership in the opening chorus of Part V was livelier than Part IV and drew neat articulation from chorus and orchestra and fluid rhythmic sprightliness from the pair of oboes that create Part V’s characteristic sound. Contralto Hannah Fraser sang the recitative with chorus, Wo ist der neugeborene Konig der Juden with wonderfully rounded pure sound.

A highlight of the entire concert was the intimate musical interaction of the aria Terzetto Ach, wenn wird die Zeit erscheinen. Here Longmuir and Porter created brightly edged excitement alongside Fiona Ziegler’s animated violin figuration, while Fraser soothed the music with a warm admonitory phrase “be silent, he is already here”.

A Prayer of Jesus by Australian composer Kayla Erin Hinton began the second half, articulating declamatory phrases accompanied by orchestration of confident radiance. Part VI, with its outer choruses laced with trumpet solos from Anthony Heinrichs, brought the concert’s choral highlights, the Philharmonia Chamber Singers articulating with energised rhythmic fluidity.

The work ends with the so-called ‘Passion chorale’ set with elaboration instrumentation and exultant trumpet figuration. The Philharmonia followed this with a reprise of the opening chorus of Part 1, which, though a masterpiece, was unnecessary here. The actual close, a true Bachian ending, expresses collective joy through masterly musical detail and symbolism, and says all that needs to be said.

THEATRE
IRVING BERLIN’S HOLIDAY INN
Riverside Theatres Parramatta, December 6
Until December 14
Reviewed by KATE PRENDERGAST
★★★★

In the 1940s, the legendary Irving Berlin (who was, ironically, Jewish) dreamt of a little number called White Christmas. At Riverside Theatres, audiences dreamt of a Christmas that doesn’t sweat their entrails out, while being razzle-dazzled to distraction by the stage adaptation of Holiday Inn, a two-hour affair featuring a live band, a dizzying array of sparkle-heavy costumes, old-world charm and some vigorously inventive original choreography by Veronica Beattie George.

If you haven’t seen a tap-dancing ensemble perform synchronised jump-rope with green tinsel, are you even in the silly season?

Holiday Inn is the film that launched the world’s best-selling single, which also starred musical history’s most dapper dynamic duo: Fred Astaire and Bing Crosby. Filling those enormous singin’ and dancin’ shoes just fine in this Well Done Creative production are Rob Mallet as Jim Hardy and Max Patterson as Ted Hanover – showbiz characters whose long friendship is put to the test when Jim’s domestic impulses and anxious sentimentality clash with Ted’s big-time ambitions. To put it another way: narrative conflict, thy name is woman.

First it’s Lila (Pamela Renouf is a sensation and a hoot as the squawking, mega-talented, self-obsessed starlet). Then it’s Linda Mason, (Mary McCorry, of classically beautiful looks and ravishing vocals), an independent-minded schoolteacher who sold Jim the Mason farm in Connecticut, where he hopes to start a new chapter away from the insanity of “the lifestyle”.

Life in the country bumpkin seat, however, turns out to be laborious, lonesome and financially challenging. With some sneaky manoeuvring from plucky farmhand Louise (Paige Fallu), he and his New York friends cook up a creative money-making ruse: to transform the property into a “Holiday Inn”, hosting extravagant ticketed shows (also charging guests for board) only on holidays. Cue Shaking the Blues Away!

There are some interesting (and essential) variations from the film. No blackface is one. There are also significant differences in narrative structure and character motivations (with Ted spared the moral grubbiness of “stealing the girl” romantically). Some songs are shuffled about to take on new meaning (a memorable moment comes when the otherwise silent drummer pipes up with his Cinderella plea to Ted: “I’m easy to dance with!”), with the best comic moments still when Jim lets jealousy undermine his own show.

As with so many crowd-pleasing productions, this one would benefit from being more snappy, with less stuffing. Some added Berlin hits feel interstitial, and the invigorating theatrical bombast under director Sally Dashwood loses a little pizzazz in the second half.

That’s not to say there isn’t a lot to be enjoyed, particularly given the robust technical skills of the actors, which are geared for delight and well-balanced with their acting chops. There’s a worthy takeaway, too, about freedom and autonomy. A line from French poet Guillaume Apollinaire that bookends the show reminds us what holidays are all about: “Now and then, it’s good to pause in our pursuit of happiness and just be happy.”

MUSIC
Kendrick Lamar
Allianz Stadium, December 10
Reviewed by BERNARD ZUEL
★★★★

Kendrick Lamar doesn’t exactly want to be a pop star, but he doesn’t not want to be one either.

Take the flames left and right and two huge screens, the sparkly-framed glasses and a posse of dancers, the giant furry dice with scented tree ornament and the scaled-up stairs on an otherwise bare stage, the crack of fireworks like cannons and a whispered start with Lamar muttering in the shadows backstage, and the powerful, crisp, clear and just-short-of-overwhelming sound.

All point to production values of a mega-pop show. All simple but effective manipulations of an environment effectively inhabited by only one non-dancing, rarely-speaking, charismatic but undemonstrative man.

But then what is King Kunta but a knee-cracking pop song? Even, or maybe especially in, this condensed version, followed with the skittish, swirling cinematic noir of Element. How many hooks are as elemental as Squabble Up’s bare-bones lean/shuffle, brought to life by those dancers and given voice by the whole stadium, or the brass-bolstered TV Off, split into two parts, an hour apart? How many stiff-legged grooves are as welcome to people who can’t necessarily dance but can strut in their seats as that offered in Humble?

Kendrick Lamar doesn’t want to be some generational spokesman, but he doesn’t not want to be one either.

Sure, the lubricious Poetic Justice was primarily focused on matters horizontal but the same territory in the old-school soul groove of Dodger Blue was laced with unceremonial frankness, and Good Credit crept into darker corners.

M.A.A.D City peeled back urban sheets and showed how everything runs on tension, and within the folding-in-on-itself progressive bass and counterweight keyboards of Reincarnated was a dense story that was always racing away with his delivery but still landed punch after punch about being that very modern creature, the uncertain adult in a childlike world.

Speaking of which, one thing Lamar very much does want to be is Drake Disser-in-Chief. Still. See both the shot early in the show, Euphoria, and the stronger chaser to close the set, Not Like Us. Kendrick, that man is down, boxed up and posted already.

While his voice is the lowest profile of the on-stage sounds, that’s ultimately irrelevant. If you don’t already know each word of these songs you aren’t serious and you aren’t meant to be here. Kendrick Lamar doesn’t want to be exclusive, but he doesn’t not want to either. Got a problem with that? To borrow from the man, “Put the Bible down and go eye for an eye for it.”

Kendrick Lamar plays Allianz Stadium tonight (December 11) and the Spilt Milk Festival in Canberra on December 13 and Gold Coast on December 14.

MUSIC
SOMBR
Hordern Pavilion, December 9
Reviewed by MILLIE MUROI
★★★★

For a young artist whose fame started with a viral song on TikTok just three years ago, Sombr is surprisingly smooth and unfazed on stage.

On his first Australian tour, the 20-year-old American singer could easily have you believe he is a seasoned pro (apart from a few too many disingenuous “I-love-yous” when he should be getting on with the show).

The setlist begins on the front foot, running through songs from Saviour, showcasing his richer, deeper tones, to We Never Dated, which drifts into an ethereal falsetto.

His range is impressive and, while he may not have an especially powerful voice, he has enough to make an impact as required. Technically, he is consistent and controlled while imbuing all of his songs with that characteristic teenage angst.

The show is prety much bare bones - one man and a band with basic production. But it’s done well.

And while it does drift at points in the second half, the setlist is not long enough to make it tedious. It’s also a comfortable sort of dip: one that still has you swaying to the music and enjoying the atmosphere.

Sombre’s has some similarities to the work of The 1975’s frontman Matty Healy. Their songs share stylistic and thematic similarities and during numbers such I Wish I Knew How to Quit You and Do I Ever Cross Your Mind, the tortured poet bearing seem familiar.

Sombr is, however, a bit softer and more palatable than Healy. Caroline - the song Sombr wrote when he was 16 and which catapulted him to fame - and Perfume, are tender, heartfelt and delivered with precision but also a mesmerising sweetness.

And while most of his lyrics are despondent, devastating or dark, there are bouncy beats, catchy bass segments and playful riffs that keep the energy high. He also finishes strong with funky songs such as 12 to 12 and his biggest hit: Back to Friends.

It may not be a concert for the ages, but it’s a seamless show with solid fundamentals.

THEATRE
BEAUTIFUL THING
Qtopia Sydney, December 5
Until December 13
Reviewed by KATE PRENDERGAST
★★★½

It’s a seasonally fitting, welcome thing to hear happy squeals and warm laughter in response to a queer drama told on stage. Often (unless it’s part cabaret), the audience’s reaction is grim, choked silence – trauma the legitimate yet scarifying seam from which a lot of LGBT+ stories are mined.

Allowing a gay “coming-of-age” love story to have a relatively untroubled trajectory and happy ending was what made Liverpudlian dramatist Jonathan Harvey want to write Beautiful Thing.

Opening in London in 1993, it went on to win a John Whiting Award, was adapted into a popular film, and had its Australian premiere at the 1998 Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras. This CODA production brings it back with a uniformly excellent cast, with Finn Stannard making an impressive directorial debut to close Qtopia’s 2025 program.

Harvey would go on to write for Coronation Street for two decades and counting, and there’s a lot of this and other British soaps’ recognisable tones and touchpoints here: a character-driven plot and working-class realism; young and old battling a hard-luck system with whatever’s at hand (in this story, the music of Mama Cass); a matter-of-factness about the realities they’re up against; violence acknowledged if not given too-graphic treatment; neighbours getting all up in each other’s business; and animated dialogue that plumbs its humour from cheek, colourful patois and bluntness.

Willa King as tough-love mum and worn-down barwoman Sandra steals the show on that last one (though her relentless shaming of heroically impudent expelled schoolgirl Leah as “slag” might be a bit dated).

Set in a South London council estate, an environment summed up by three sky-blue doors on a grey tenement wall, the “beautiful thing” in question is the tender relationship that forms between Hello! magazine-reading Jamie (Jake Walker) and much more athletic Ste (Max Dykstra), which begins when Ste takes refuge from an abusive father in his neighbour’s bedroom.

It’s also how frowsy queen Sandra, her new boyfriend Tony (Michael Hogg) and “lost cause” Leah (Poppy Cozens) react. It’s not a big spoiler to say: pretty well! When Tony, a stand-in father figure, wraps trembling Jamie in a bear hug and says with a smiling reassurance “it’s OK” after the boy comes out to his mum, a widespread corneal leakage event was seen in the audience.

It is interesting to follow Tony through the play. He develops into something of a wish-fulfilment vehicle – a fantasy of the even-tempered, open-minded and gently loving guardian we all deserve. A handyman and artist, cheerily chill and twinkle-eyed, he worships Sandra, shares a joint with Jamie, and knows exactly what to do when Leah is tripping Mama Cass Fantastic.

The final scene seems to try to negate the “magical straight saviour” role he may otherwise have slipped into – not wholly satisfyingly, though.

Beautiful Thing might not be cutting-edge queer, but it’s a lovely little slice-of-life story, full of endearing performances, humour and heart.

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