Even surrounded by an orchestra, Lime Cordiale’s charisma shines through

MUSIC
LIME CORDIALE AND THE SYDNEY SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA
Concert Hall, Sydney Opera House, October 16, until October 18
Reviewed by NADIA RUSSELL
★★★★

Even surrounded by the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, Lime Cordiale’s charisma and stage presence shone through on Thursday night.

It might be unexpected to see a collaboration between the SSO and the pop rock Aussie band, formed by brothers Oliver (Oli) and Louis Leimbach, but the pair are both classically trained musicians – and they made sure to let everyone know it.

Not long after Oli told the audience about their time at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, he took on a tenor saxophone while Louis played trumpet for an act one climax of Love Is Off The Table, elevated by the rousing orchestra with a guitar solo to finish.

The orchestral arrangement by Alex Turley highlighted all the sections of the symphony under conductor Vanessa Scammell. The electric array of percussion instruments added a whimsical quality, the trombones stealing the show in select moments, and for the outro of Naturally, the flute, oboe and bassoon sang beautifully together. The backing vocals and acoustics also lent incredible weight to the vocals not heard in the studio versions.

The brothers also paid tribute to their late father with a poignant speech, followed by the touching song Household Name, which they said they had originally wanted to play it for him at the show. The audience was deeply moved by the emotional moment, leading to a standing ovation at the conclusion of the song.

While the Concert Hall is a far cry from the rowdy venues fans would be used to, the performance was energetic and the crowd by no means quiet. The show was complemented by lighting design that imbued the sense of being at a concert rather than a recital – and heads in the audience were bobbing. The orchestra even leant into Lime Cordiale’s ethos during No Plans to Make Plans by joining the brothers with kazoos instead of their actual instruments for an interlude.

It took time for the crowd to warm up to the intimate show, but by the second act people were getting up to dance to the upbeat numbers. Lime Cordiale performing with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra for this “bucket list” show was a refreshing change of pace that was never stuffy or pretentious.

Hearing a new take on this Aussie band was illuminating and this kind of show is something that more artists should aspire to try should the opportunity come their way.

THEATRE
MEOW MEOW’S THE RED SHOES
Belvoir St Theatre, October 15, until November 9
Reviewed by JOHN SHAND
★★★

A fright wig and false eyelashes can only take you so far. From the time she clawed her way into our hearts nearly 25 years ago, Meow Meow backed up the ditsy exterior trappings in her cabaret shows with a striking singing voice and a zany, gloriously unpredictable stage persona. Meow Meow’s The Red Shoes is a cat of a different colour.

She has presented shows derived from Hans Christian Andersen before, reimagining The Little Mermaid and The Little Match Girl. If her Red Shoes, here having its premiere season, happily has no girl’s dancing feet being chopped off, it does feel like it was shooed into the rehearsal room with director Kate Champion while only a kitten’s fetus.

Not a play, it’s a cabaret show with themes of red shoes and greed, lovingly wrapped in improbably juxtaposed songs, ranging from what I presume was her own Why Must There Be an Opening Number? to Radiohead’s No Surprises and Patrick Watson’s Here Comes a River. These are expertly performed with singer Kanen Breen, pianist Mark Jones, bassist Dan Witton and guitarist/percussionist Jethro Woodward, who also become props and characters.

Meow, of course, is the main event. To begin, she’s dragged on stage comatose: the eternal show girl, now loath to perform. Then she sings, dances, talks, improvises, climbs things, dies, eats a sandwich, dresses, undresses, pumps the bellows of a harmonium with her foot and even pinches audience members’ handbags and clothing. Yet after a while – and it only last 75 minutes – I was thinking that there was something richer and darker to be mined from The Red Shoes than this; that there’s too much surface and not enough substance.

Don’t get me wrong: her singing can still be glorious and her sheer zaniness intoxicating. In the latter regard, she’s something of a throwback to the Dada movement of a century ago, with meaning less important than surprising images and songs. But the Meow Meow who can be achingly funny was missing too often, with not much to replace it. She laments the failure of communism in its “all for one and one for all” sense, delightfully reimagines Hamlet as a Eurovision song and quizzes Andersen (Breen) about his layered meanings in The Red Shoes. Little illumination results (although the meaning of Andersen’s tale is very much in the reader’s mind).

Nothing is explicit – and that’s, no doubt, the point of the show. But here her theatrical version of chaos theory needs another layer, whether of humour or narrative, or there’s a slight feeling of the empress having insufficient clothes (despite multiple costume changes). Perhaps Champion needed to be a more rigorous director to help distil something beyond random flights of fancy. Meow is so innately gifted, captivating and, above all, audacious, but here it’s just not quite enough.

MUSIC
TEDDY SWIMS
Qudos Bank Arena, October 14
Reviewed by KATE PRENDERGAST
★★★★★

Finding galaxies of love under tattooed eyelids, and a kingly swagger in white socks riding free on stocky legs, the cuddly American gangster of self-acceptance and soul took Sydney right up to the heavenly high he’s on in his healing journey, with big-budget pyrotechnics to match those big-belted feels. Since the breakout success of I’ve Tried Everything But Therapy (Part 1) in 2023, with its heavyweight hits about toxic co-dependency, addiction and heartbreak, Teddy Swims has come a long way.

He’s been to therapy, for one. He’s also found love again, the wholesome kind. Plus, with global tours and billions of streams, the former YouTube cover artist sure is making bank.

“I’m so grateful towards my shitty ex-girlfriend,” he joked good-heartedly to a packed arena. Though Teddy still pays tribute to (Part 1), tucking a few of the best into the encore, this tour is a celebration in the spirit of 2025’s (Part 2), where he’s come out of all that pain to a place he couldn’t have imagined a few years back: enormous gratitude.

Sydney is his first Australian tour stop, but his second October show, having won hearts in a kilt at the NRL Grand Finals. Still with Freaky Feely backing – the high school band he’s brought with him on the up and up – it’s a two-hour-long theatre of the full second album tracklist, and then some. A natural performer, we see Teddy crooning Bad Dreams into a mic stand shaped like a voluptuous woman, going back to the raw place with Some Things I’ll Never Know, getting tender with Small Hands devoted to his new baby boy, crowd-pleasing at the close with Lose Control.

It’s a powerful, oaky, aching voice: soaked in decades of smoke and liquor; trained on YouTube clips, high school musicals and Atlanta area bands; and set on its god-gifted course to slow-burning stardom by a sweetheart dad who introduced him to the likes of Al Green.

The production gives him the panache he deserves, while showing his sense of humour. At one point, following rolling fog and shooting flames, we see Teddy reappear on the summit of a golden ramp on a dunny throne from a hidden trapdoor. Wardrobe whirls him through a white cowboy suit, a tarot-patterned silk robe, a black T and shorts, and a creamy trench coat. Shoes? When you’re that grounded, who needs ’em.

It’s no wonder audiences adore him: an everyman shot to pop firmaments on true talent, ribbing and relishing the trappings of class. A role model for a generation leaning into the strength of vulnerability, it’s big love all round.

THEATRE
THE SHIRALEE
Drama Theatre, October 10
Until November 29
Reviewed by JOHN SHAND
★★★

A deep sense of mythology surrounds the reader in D’Arcy Niland’s 1955 novel, The Shiralee. It’s as if the very landscape of mid-20th-century Australia is misanthropic, while those inhabiting it can be as deadly as brown snakes.

In adapting the novel, playwright Kate Mulvany and director Jessica Arthur (for Sydney Theatre Company) have been aware of this quality, but they’ve only partially succeeded in transmitting it through their production. Too often this feels like a musical minus the songs: as gooey as a box of chocolates in the sun when attempting warmth of heart, and a little lame and stagy when shooting for menace.

Niland’s novel tells of Mac, an itinerant jack-of-all-trades, who arrives back in Sydney to find his wife in bed with another bloke. Mac sorts out the bloke with his fists, and his wife by taking their daughter, Buster, and hitting the road. It’s a tale of a little girl adoring her remote, belligerent father, and gradually wearing away his armoured outer layer, almost as slowly as water acts on stone.

Given the limitations of child actors, Buster is now nine rather than four, which shifts the dynamic considerably, as a four-year-old is obviously more helpless and dependent. Mulvany uses this shift to craft a more knowing, perceptive and wily Buster, and then Arthur has cast the notable Ziggy Resnick in the role. Although over a dozen years older than Buster, Resnick locates the truth of the bashfulness, eagerness, playfulness, bewilderment, humour, earnestness and staunch morality.

Mulvany also makes Buster more influential and more evenly matched in size of role with Mac, played by Josh McConville. McConville is convincing as the bluff, taciturn man who solves money problems with his sweat, and people problems with his fists. Tempered like steel in a forge, he is loath to let this slip of a girl, this shiralee (or burden) change his pugnacious, self-absorbed life.

Niland peoples his novel with vivid incidental characters, and a further six actors assume multiple roles, including Mulvany herself playing Marge, Buster’s mother, whom she makes more rounded and sympathetic now she’s not just being seen through Mac’s eyes.

Paul Capsis is ideal as the superbly eccentric Desmond, a cycling swaggie and published bush poet. He (as do most of the minor characters) offers flickers of illumination to the protagonists, especially Buster, who is photographic paper in this regard compared with Mac’s carbon paper. Stephen Anderson, Lucia Mastrantone, Aaron Pedersen and Catherine Van-Davies complete the cast.

Unlike the book, the story is told chronologically, which perhaps partly undermines that mythic quality: time is now linear rather than looped. But Jeremy Allen’s set bolsters the mythology, expertly using the Drama Theatre’s widescreen stage, while Jessica Dunn’s music amplifies the sense of space, foreboding and starry-skied wonderment. Alas, they can’t help the fact that when the play swerves back towards naturalism, it should be woven from grittier fabric.

MUSIC
HARRY BENNETTS PERFORMS BEETHOVEN’S VIOLIN CONCERTO
Sydney Symphony Orchestra, City Recital Hall, October 9
Reviewed by PETER MCCALLUM
★★★½

Harry Bennetts played Beethoven’s Violin Concerto with a sweet sound, fine line and nuanced care, allowing the work’s beauties to unfold lyrically without false drama or undue storminess.

Conductor Umberto Clerici began the opening orchestral tutti with unhurried gentleness. There was no hint of spikiness when the string parts took up the quiet opening drum beats, and the phrases breathed in long lines, moving with the breadth and inevitability of a noble river.

When Bennetts took up the solo entry, it was not with the swagger of a virtuoso driven by posturing heroics, but rather with a focus on allowing the work’s intricacies to blossom with precision and clarity. In the codetta section, as the orchestra starts to surge, Bennett twice responded to the challenge with aptly projected vigour, but on the third, took on the Orphean task of taming them with quiet calm.

In the development section, when the soloist brings back the opening theme in B minor, high in the violin’s range, Bennetts created a memorable moment of transparent expressiveness without excess. The cadenza of the first movement (by Joachim) held attention with its even, unpressed resonance, contrapuntal clarity, glowing tone and true intonation without a hint of roughness or unwanted bow noise.

All of this, of course, requires some freedom with the tempo which, for me, was slightly overdone in the Coda. The slow movement captured a sense of fresh stillness, Bennett ornamenting the underlying orchestral theme with balanced ornamentation of silvery brightness. I occasionally found the sense of pulse in the orchestral playing floated so freely it almost dissolved.

The finale had beguiling buoyancy from both soloist and conductor. After another finely polished cadenza and exuberant Coda, Bennett started the last arpeggio with hushed insouciance as though beginning a new episode before the orchestra emphatically stopped any further discussion.

In the second half Clerici and the Sydney Symphony again emphasised gentle lyricism in Schubert’s Symphony No. 4 in C minor, D. 417 Tragic. The first movement was fretful and agitated (‘Tragic’ as a subtitle has always seemed a little overblown) and the second gracious. In the third movement, Clerici and the SSO played Schubert’s cross-accents to create a sense of poised ambiguity. The finale was neat and discursive, as the young Schubert (he was only 19) was prone to be.

DANCE
THE BOGONG’S SONG: A CALL TO COUNTRY
Bangarra Studio Theatre, October 9, until October 19
Reviewed by CHANTAL NGUYEN (with James and Teddy Gribble, and Charlie Price)
★★★½
My co-reviewers Jamie (aged eight), his brother Teddy and their cousin Charlie (both aged six) didn’t even make it to their seats before being captivated by the moody blue uplighting at Bangarra Studio Theatre.

It was a foretaste of the atmospheric vibe of Bangarra Dance Theatre’s school holiday show The Bogong’s Song by Yolande Brown and Chenoa Deemal, for ages five plus. It tells the story of siblings Beau and Myee (played by Benjin Maza and Tjilala Brown-Roberts, both fabulous triple threats). They are dream-transported to ancestral Country in the Snowy Mountains, where they must find a missing Bogong moth, healing the land and their own hearts along the way. “They were in sync like all the time when they danced!” Jamie observed.

The Bogong’s Song features pretty much everything you could think of for a children’s production. There’s acting, singing, rapping, animated backgrounds, talking trees, hand-held puppets, shadow puppets, sing-alongs, and dancing. While the pacing can be patchy and the narrative occasionally lags, enough happens to keep things rolling. And the animal characters are a hit.

“I liked the possum and the baby possum!” enthused Teddy. “I liked the lizard,” responds Charlie. “He was funny because he said he would eat the moth but then he didn’t!”

Jamie agreed. “He was hilarious! He used a chip packet as a solar panel!”

There are also heartfelt lessons. “It was about helping the endangered moths,” explained Jamie. “[The siblings] needed to connect with Country, which meant listening to Country and the land. It made me feel good, but a little bit sad for how the world was treated.”

Teddy nodded thoughtfully: “They were trying to not let the worlds separate.”

The Bogong’s Song also grapples with Australia’s shockingly young age of criminal responsibility, as Beau and Myee grieve the imprisonment of their deaf little brother Joey. That part, recounted Jamie, is “very, very sad”.

“He stole lollies. He went to jail. And he was 10. He was confused and scared. Couldn’t he just get a fine?”

The high point is the finale, featuring an all-too-short traditional dance featuring ochre paint and didgeridoo music. This part has no wisecracking animals or cartoons, but its power is immediately palpable. The children in the audience become transfixed, completely still and silent, as if responding to some deep, ancient summons that cuts through all the screens, lights, and noise.

MUSIC
THE TALLIS SCHOLARS
Sydney Opera House, October 12
Reviewed by PETER MCCALLUM
★★★★★

The Tallis Scholars began their eleventh Australian tour with a glowing, subtly invigorated sound of rich density and iridescent edge in the splendid eight-part motet Deus in adiutorium by the 17th century Spanish/Mexican composer Juan Gutierrez de Padilla.

In an interview earlier in the day, director and founder of the Tallis Scholars, Peter Phillips, gave some insight into what gives this doyen of Renaissance vocal ensembles its distinctive tonal quality which is so elusive to describe yet instantly loved by audiences worldwide. He spoke of the micro-refinements of tuning that singers undertake when singing without instruments.

Equally important, of course, is the talent, dedication and professionalism of the singers and, in Phillips’ case, 53 years of experience in refining and perfecting the Tallis Scholars to lay bare the glories of the Renaissance with transparent clarity.

Listening closely to the vibrant chords of Padilla’s work, one can hear, beyond the purity of tone and pitch, small harmonics of the sort one hears in singing from Bulgaria to Tibet that add shafts of colour and engender delight. The program was built around the theme of chant which appeared in beguiling simplicity in the next work, in principio by 12th century abbess, Hildegard of Bingen, sung by a sub-group of female singers with disarming naturalness of line and rhythm.

A more recent adaptation of chant-based melodic and polyphonic structures was then presented in Arvo Part’s Triodion, written for the 150th anniversary of Lancing College in Sussex, England. A different range of harmonics emerged in the halos of Part’s delicately soft blends of humming, solo and widely spaced voices, leading to a still central point that even a fretful baby in the audience could not disturb.

After another chant by Hildegard the first half concluded with the substantial motet by Jacob Obrecht, Salve Regina, in which varying groupings of the 10 voices coalesced and mutated to create a sense of timeless calm. To start the second half, the singers split into widely separated groups for Allegri’s Miserere mei, Deus. Phillips directed the first chorus from the stage, a solo singer sang chant section from the eastern gallery, while, high in the south-western part of the hall the second chorus was heard magically from behind as soprano Emma Walsh embellished the choral sound by repeatedly ascending with apparently effortless grace to an ethereal high C.

Part’s Magnificat and Da Pacem Domine again led listeners to utterances that were at once almost inaudibly quiet yet palpable and definite. After Hildegard’s O ecclesia, Josquin des Prez’ Praeter rerum began with darker low-pitched textures, ending with the richly rewarding choral sound that had been heard at the start and to which it is so easy to become addicted.

MUSIC
TRIO ISIMSIZ
City Recital Hall, October 13
Reviewed by PETER MCCALLUM
★★★½

In the Renaissance, a missa sine nomine was literally “a Mass without a name”, which meant that, unlike most Masses of the time, it didn’t build on pre-existing material.

Violinist Pablo Hernan Benedi, cellist Edvard Pogossian and pianist Erdem Misirlioglu have adopted the same paradoxical nomenclature by christening themselves Trio Isimsiz, which is Turkish for “trio without name”. Their program of music by Brahms, Coll and Schubert also consisted of works without names in that all of them were simply called “Piano Trio”, though the trio by Francisco Coll did make references to pre-existing music and styles, which flitted into the background like music half-remembered in a dream.

One allusion was to Strauss’ comic opera Die Schweigsame Frau (The Silent Woman) about an old man whose intolerance of noise becomes a vehicle for his torment by the young. It was, in one sense, a metaphor for the way chaotic textures in Coll’s trio fragmented and subverted coherent musical ideas just as they began to emerge. The trio began with a short spiky restless movement in which pizzicato string notes and scattered staccato chords from the piano were thrown frenetically across the range of all three instruments, like someone tearing up a first draft.

The second movement, the longest and weightiest, began with a bell-like chord on the piano and explored expressive melody and quiet, lonely spaces, sustaining ideas and building up tension in a more familiar way. The third movement returned to fragmented thinking, lurching in two-note figures from violin and cello accompanied by shattered sprays of notes from the piano.

The final movement scurried away with impulsive energy, with bursts of scales and contrapuntal ideas that quickly petered out and went nowhere. Towards the end, the music became quiet, like dust settling after a furious row, and a waltz-like figure emerged and quickly vanished in the distance.

Before this, Trio Isimsiz played Brahms’ Piano Trio in C minor, Opus 101, adopting an approach of indulgent freedom of rhythm and tempo. Although such freedom is inherent to Romantic style, I found the approach became stertorous here, without effect in the first movement, and blunted the syncopations in the finale by blurring the beat they were playing against.

The second half was given over to a spacious, lyrical reading of Schubert’s Piano Trio No. 1 in B-flat, D 898. In the first movement they threaded an expansive narrative of melody, ending with playful delicacy in the Coda. The slow movement moved from dreamy exchanges to hushed, intense contrapuntal playing. The Scherzo was bright and airy, and the finale unfolded with unhurried leisure.

Find out the next TV, streaming series and movies to add to your must-sees. Get The Watchlist delivered every Thursday.