The Seven Deadly Sins
The Moorings, 31 Glenbervie Tce, Wellington
13/05/2011 - 20/05/2011
Production Details
Captivating dance-opera experience to transport Wellington audiences to 1930s America
Wellington audiences should prepare themselves for an evening of lust, greed, envy, gluttony, pride, greed and wrath, as Opera/Fabula presents Kurt Weill and Bert Brecht’s modern dance/opera work, The Seven Deadly Sins, in a unique interpretation staged in a historic Wellington venue. Set against the sultry backdrop of 1930s America, this bittersweet morality tale leads the audience through seven iconic cities and popular music of the era. Called ‘harmonically pungent, bustling and brilliant’ by the New York Times, The Seven Deadly Sins is a rare treat for New Zealand audiences. At the helm of this production is opera director Steven Whiting, a long-time member of The NBR NZ Opera’s artistic team.
One of the great satires of modern music, The Seven Deadly Sins has been performed by opera and dance companies all over the world, including New York City Ballet, Lyon Opera-Ballet, City Opera and the Royal Ballet. A powerful dance-opera work for one soprano, one contemporary dancer and a male vocal quartet, accompanied by piano, The Seven Deadly Sins tells the story of Anna, a young girl sent by her family to work her way across America to pay for the family home they are building in Louisiana. A victim of economic happenstance, Anna becomes a commodity, passed from invisible hand to invisible hand, paving the way for an intricate examination of hierarchy, power, capitalism and human dynamics, set against the turbulence of Depression-era America.
Anna is played by two girls: one who sings the character, and does what her overbearing family ask of her, the other who dances the role, and follows her heart. Harried by a moralising male quartet (consisting of Thomas Barker, Jamie Young, Kieran Rayner and Thomas O’Brien) the role of Anna will be performed by mezzo-soprano Bianca Andrew and contemporary dancer Anita Hunziker.
Bianca Andrew has recently completed her Bachelor of Music at the New Zealand School of Music (NZSM) in Wellington, where she is currently studying towards a Post Graduate Diploma in Music, before heading to Europe for further vocal study. Currently under the tuition of Margaret Medlyn, Bianca performed the role of Ino in the 2009 NZSM production of Handel’s ‘Semele’, and frequently represents the School in their public concerts. She has performed roles with the Days Bay Opera company, including Cherubino in Mozart’s ‘The Marriage of Figaro’ and Modestina in Rossini’s ‘The Journey to Rheims’. In August 2011 she will perform the lead role of Oberon in the NZSM’s production of Britten’s ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’. Concert highlights include performing the role of Octavian with the Manukau Symphony Orchestra in a performance of the final trio and duet from ‘Der Rosenkavalier’, and performances of French sacred music by Saint-Saëns and Duruflé as a soloist for both the Cathedral Choir of St Paul’s and The Festival Singers. Bianca has received several scholarships, including the Moyra Todd Memorial Scholarship; the Rotary Club of Wellington Music Prize for classical music; and a Dame Malvina Major Foundation High Achiever’s Award. In 2010 she was awarded first prize in the inaugural Alliance Française Concours de la Chanson for her rendition of modern French song.
Contemporary dancer Anita Hunziker is well-known to audiences in Wellington and around the country, having performed with contemporary dance company Footnote Dance for the last six years. She trained at the New Zealand School of Dance, and on graduation was named Overall Best Student in 2004. While performing with Footnote, Hunziker worked with New Zealand’s leading choreographers including Malia Johnston, Raewyn Hill, Claire O’Neil, Sarah Foster, Michael Parmenter, Deirdre Tarrant, Maria Dabrowska and Kristian Larsen. She performed Mtyland by Claire O’Neil at the 2010 New Zealand International Arts Festival and represented New Zealand performing Purlieu by Malia Johnston at the 2010 Shanghai World Expo. Last year, the acclaimed dancer won Best Established Female Performer at the Tempo Dance Awards and was awarded the title of ‘Pocket Rocket’ in The Listener Art Awards. More recently, Hunziker has performed in Sam Trubridge’s Ecology In Fifths and at the 2011 Auckland Arts Festival The Show Must Go On by acclaimed French choreographer Jerome Bel.
In this edgy production of The Seven Deadly Sins, the audience will be invited into the inner world of the piece, and the action will happen in very close proximity to them. Director, Steven Whiting, says, ‘The standing room only audience are sharing an intimate space with the two Annas – It’s a constant negotiation, and they will have to be on their toes.’ Following six years of assisting some of opera’s most well-known directors (he recently assisted Sir Nicholas Hytner at Glyndebourne Opera Festival and worked with Tim Albery restaging last years Macbeth here in New Zealand) Whiting is turning his attention to staging original work. ‘It feels like the right time to tell this story: a young girl caught up in a crisis of capitalism, navigating a world poised between depression and destruction – it captures the zeitgeist with a real elegance and poignancy.’
The Seven Deadly Sins (Die sieben Todsünden) dates from 1933, the year Kurt Weill left Germany for Paris, after his music had been labelled ‘degenerate’ by the Nazis. Originally, he had envisaged it as a Freudian psychological drama and asked Jean Cocteau to write the libretto. When Cocteau turned it down, Weill turned to his long-time collaborator Bertold Brecht, who agreed on condition that he could use it to depict the corruption of the individual in a capitalist society. Rounding out the list of luminaries, George Balanchine choreographed the original production for the experimental Paris-based company, Les Ballets.
The music of The Seven Deadly Sins is quintessential Weill; marked by driving rhythms and unusual orchestrations. Popular music from the 1920s and 1930s – foxtrots, waltzes, marches, a barbershop quartet – are all artfully woven into a stunning symphonic whole. Accompanying the production is Jonathan Berkahn, for whom blending classical and popular music is nothing new. Director of Music at St Barnabas Anglican Church, Berkahn works regularly with the Festival Singers and Orpheus choir, and is equally at home as an operatic accompanist (Menotti’s Old Maid and the Thief for Massey University) or playing for and calling a ceilidh.
This production of The Seven Deadly Sins will be presented in an intimate period setting in The Moorings – a heritage home in Thorndon, Wellington. Don’t miss this uniquely captivating theatrical experience and the chance to see international repertoire of the highest calibre performed by fresh New Zealand talent.
The Seven Deadly Sins
The Moorings, 31 Glenbervie Terrace, Thorndon, Wellington
7pm, Friday 13–20 May 2011, with no show on Monday
Suggested koha $10 per person
For bookings, email operafabula@gmail.com
or call 04 479 1033. Door sales are also available.
Anna (singer): Bianca Andrew
Anna (dancer): Anita Hunziker
Male quartet: Thomas Barker, Jamie Young, Kieran Rayner and Thomas O’Brien
Accompanist: Jonathan Berkahn
Powerful and poignant
Review by Deirdre Tarrant 20th May 2011
Kurt Weill’s music and Bert Brecht’s text provide social commentary of both American society and universal morality. Breaking traditions and pushing boudndaries, this is important work from two key modernist artists. Intensely and cleverly staged by Steven Whiting, with exemplary musical direction and accompaniment by Jonathan Berkham, this version is set in the Moorings, a rundown and tattered relic of Thorndon grandeur that layers this production and personally connects us to the intrigue.
Anna, superbly sung by Bianca Andrew and her alter ego/sister danced by the high-tensile Anita Hunziker, is complex, worldly, calculating, simple, appealing and foolish by turns, and together they take us on their journey through the ‘seven sins’ and the cities of America.
A quartet of wonderful voices by Thomas O’Brien, Thomas Barker, Kieran Rayner and Jamie Young interacts as chorus and characters in the story.
The audience is inextricably involved by the clever use of spaces, and the suitcases that carry the baggage of not only Anna but the world, are battered and bruised. They ultimately become a physical barricade as hopes are dashed and dreams are shattered.
Powerful and poignant , even the walk up a broken dark path from the lights of Tinakori Rd plays a part in the inventiveness of this production. Go if you can, this is a rare and intimate experience – the memories will linger.
Copyright © in the review belongs to the reviewer
Experimental vision executed with skill and precision in perfect harmony
Review by James McKinnon 14th May 2011
Many performances make a critic’s life easy by providing only two or three worthwhile topics of discussion (and often plenty of time to frame them all in the mind’s eye before the curtain falls). The Seven Deadly Sins, by contrast, is difficult to review because there is so much that needs to be said about it, in spite of its brief running time. Choosing just a few things to say was not easy, and it certainly didn’t happen during the performance, which pumps more excitement into one short act than most productions do in two long ones. But duty calls, so…
First, this performance deserves to be seen because the creators – led by director Steven Whiting and musical director Jonathan Brekhan – are offering a rare chance to see an important, experimental work from the oeuvre of dramatist Bertolt Brecht and composer Kurt Weill, two of the most influential figures in their respective fields in the 20th century.
The piece exemplifies the spirit of the modernist age, challenging all established rules and conventions of the form. Indeed, of all forms: there isn’t even a way to classify it except to give it its own genre: ‘One act satirical opera’? ‘Operatic satirical dance drama’? Officially, it is a ‘sung ballet’ (ballet chanté), but that doesn’t quite cut it either. So see it because you won’t get very many chances to see a work of this nature here.
Second, the staging is as innovative as the piece, and the experience is utterly unlike a conventional night at the theatre (or opera, or ballet, or whatever). The venue demands it: Seven Deadly Sins is performed in the ballroom at The Moorings, a private residence in Thorndon (the cliché ‘character home’ doesn’t do it justice). Spectators gather in an anteroom’ – i.e., someone’s living room – and are led into the ballroom at the appointed time. There is standing room only (this is not an imposition given the brief duration of the show), and on Friday night there was barely even that.
The performers – a singer, a dancer, a male chorus, and a pianist – use both the main floor and the mezzanine, and spectators must be alert to their movements through the space and prepared to make way at any moment. Direct contact between and among performers and spectators is a necessity, and the production gleefully embraces it.
The show’s extreme intimacy and fluidity creates a unique and intense experience, and forces spectators to be fully alive, alert, and attentive, because they need to be conscious and conscientious of the spatial needs and sightlines of the performers and other spectators. The performance demands attentiveness and courtesy, which creates a powerful sense of temporary community that is totally unlike the experience of sitting privately in the dark, fifteen meters away from the action and essentially unaware of other spectators around you. This isn’t a show you watch, it’s an experience you take part in, and that alone is a great reason to see it.
Last, but certainly not least, the performers are excellent. This musically and physically challenging production demands a rare array of talent: very few people can sing well and move well, and this production demands exceptional skill in both areas simultaneously.
As Anna I, the sister with ‘practical sense’, singer Bianca Andrew is responsible for the storytelling (and much of the traffic control), and she does an impressive job of maintaining a clear narrative under the chaotic conditions of the performance.
As Anna II, the victim of her family’s predations and of Brecht and Weill’s satire, Anita Hunziker’s main role is to dance, and she does so with intensity and precision – even though she is usually hemmed in by spectators. Hunziker creates the illusion of spontaneous kinetic expression, but the conditions demand absolute precision.
The chorus (Thomas O’Brien, Thomas Barker, Kieran Rayner, Jamie Young), playing the sisters’ family and the various characters they encounter during their harrowing, seven year journey back and forth across Brecht and Weill’s fantasy of America, play and sing their roles with enthusiasm and authority. Not only do they have to move and sing at the same time, they often have to move independently while singing in harmony, but they make it look easy.
There are other reasons to see this show, too (the chance to see the interior of The Moorings alone is well worth the price of admission – a koha, which I happily contributed, waiving my privileges as a critic), but those are the best.
The Seven Deadly Sins at The Moorings is an important piece from the modernist repertory, staged in perfect harmony with the experimental vision of its authors, and executed with skill and precision. It’s an experience you won’t forget – and even if you disagree with me, it will have cost you nothing to find out for yourself.
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Comments
steve dean May 15th, 2011
Glenbervy = Glenbervie. Now people will be able to GoogleMap it.
[Don't know how that happened but fixed now - thanks Steve - ED]
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