MUSICAL Elegies: A Song Cycle ★★★★ By William Finn, fortyfivedownstairs, until July 21 Big-ticket commercial musicals dominate Melbourne’s East End theatre district. They’re easy to find. For musical theatre connoisseurs, however, there are often hidden gems on the indie scene and Elegies: A Song Cycle is one.
Much-loved actor Nadine Garner gives a masterclass in her sharp evocation of an unabashedly elitist English teacher. Credit: Ben Fon The debut from new company Clovelly Fox, formed by artistic director Tyran Parke, offers a moving and memorable production of a song cycle written by William Finn, the Broadway composer behind Falsettos and The 25th Annual Putnam Spelling Bee . It’s an unusually poignant and autobiographical suite of songs, guided by memory and emotion rather than narrative, layering a lament for lost friends and relations and colleagues (and even pets) with tenderness and humour, weaving intimate personal recollections and anecdotes into the collective experience of loss.
The latter includes the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, approached through the eyes of an architect, and the tragic initial phase of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, accessed through memories of creative vitality and community, of friends who died of the disease before life-saving treatments became available. Memoir-like sketches of characters and episodes drawn from life are especially vivid, in the hands of a luxurious cast who handle the material with sensitivity and a lightness of touch. They seem to relish the chance (not always available in blockbuster musicals) to flex their muscles acting through song.
Much-loved actor Nadine Garner gives a masterclass in her sharp evocation of an unabashedly elitist English teacher, facing death and finding solace in the firm knowledge that she has passed on her love of literature to students who could keep up with her. Elegies features an unusually poignant and autobiographical suite of songs. Credit: Ben Fon She’s also great opposite Kerrie Anne Greenland in another literary song, Dear Reader , an antagonistic duet between a reader and a novelist satirising certain ambivalences between artist and audience.
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