SYDNEY FESTIVAL - OPTIMISM
Optimism by Tom Wright, after Voltaire, Opera House Drama Theatre, January 12-February 20. Photo: Lisa Tomasetti. Sydney Theatre Company.
The Malthouse Melbourne production of Optimism (brought to Sydney by the STC and Sydney Festival) is reminiscent of an unusually high budget university revue and most optimism felt at the prospect of this production gradually leached away by the end of the first half. Part of the disappointment has to arise from the “direct from the Edinburgh Festival” banner that flies over this rickety charabanc. Direct it might be, but the reception in the Reykjavik of the South (no longer the Athens of the North, now much cheaper and way less prestigious than in days gone by) was tepid at best, although we’re not told that. Realistically, there are some 600 productions now going home with “direct from” tags, and most were not smash hits.
So why, despite the energy, talent and efforts of the top-notch cast, was Optimism – in the main – so miserably dull? The finger has to be pointed at director Michael Kantor. He seems obsessed with out-Barrie-ing Barrie Kosky without understanding quite what it is about Kosky’s work that makes so much of it exciting and outrageous and theatrically satisfying. Whatever Kosky is doing, there is an internal logic to it that anchors the work – no matter how rarefied or crazy it may seem. There is also a degree of intellectual rigour through his thinking that can enrage and engage in equal measure, but it’s always there.
By comparision, the puerile humour and heavy-handed treatment and realisation of Optimism is mainly painful when not just plain silly. From my point of view, it suffers from its proximity in the Sydney Festival to the Ostermeier Hamlet but even so, it’s hard to think that it would ever seem much more than fatuous. When the only real laugh of the night is generated by a good old-fashioned pratfall, there is something seriously awry.
The play is by Tom Wright and is an adapatation and renovation of the Voltaire satirical classic, Candide (played here by the wondrous Frank Woodley whose experience in stand-up comedy enables him to rise above and beyond everything around him and communicate with the audience). He is the innocent abroad – very abroad as he jets from Europe to South America. He is in search of the meaning of life, as taught by his tutor Pangloss (Barry Otto who is also much better than the production). In his travels, Candide stumbles from disaster to tragedy to Venezuela but never loses the optimism that buoys him, like a cork, on a sea of sorrows. That in itself should be cause for reflection, but the relentless undercutting of the human qualities of the characters, and determination to suck a cheap laugh where possible (or not) militates against it.
Alison Whyte, Hamish Michael, Amanda Bishop, Caroline Craig, David Wood and Francis Greenslade) complete the hard-working and excellent cast and they provide occasional flashes of brilliance in the mishmash. Similarly, Iain Grandage’s score, played live by Alan John, is also first-rate; but it’s to no avail. The task is too hard.
