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Judi Connelli at the Civic
Review

Judi Connelli at the Civic

March 6 2010

BURNED at the stake. That would have been the fate of Judi Connelli if she’d lived in the Middle Ages because she would have been deemed a witch – such was the fate of women born with different coloured eyes. As it is, in the 21st century, in the 40th year of her brilliant career, it’s the audience that gets burned – exquisitely – by the close proximity, in cabaret, to one of the greatest voices and greatest live performers Australia has produced.

Connelli has been lost to the small rooms and intimate environments in recent years, particularly in Sydney, because of a move to Melbourne and consequent roles in Production Company shows such as Gypsy and Sunset Boulevard. And, most famously, perhaps, she has carved a unique niche in opera and, especially, the role of Mrs Lovett in Opera Australia’s production of Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd.

As a Sondheim interpreter there is no one else in this country who comes close. From the STC’s wonderful if somewhat ill-starred Into the Woods in the early 1990s, to the full-bore glory of Sweeney opposite Peter Coleman Wright, Connelli is without peer. She reminded us of that with a delicious sequence of segued highlights (medley is too crass) in an evening of highlights.

”Everything I do is a finale,” she quipped after peeling herself and the audience off the ceiling for a third or fourth time. “Maybe it means I want it to be over.” It is over for us in Sydney at least for the time being: Connelli is appearing next in The Threepenny Opera and then a long contract in Mary Poppins, which begins its Australian run in Melbourne later this year. So if you missed these Trevor Ashley-initiated performances at the Civic: that’s it for the foreseeable future.

She may yet give away the solo cabaret show: for an artist whose gift is related to having fewer defences and thinner skin than the norm, it’s a trial that can be physically and mentally exhausting. Being without hiding places – a character, props, costumes, other actors or even the comforting darkness “out there” that keeps an audience at arm’s length – is possibly something Connelli has become warier of as the years go by. Although her skills, voice, stagecraft and experience have never been finer it doesn’t get easier at all, rather the opposite; the price she pays is high.

Ironically, it’s the very things that make it dangerous for the artist that also so powerfully affects an audience, think Garland and Callas. The baring of the heart and soul, the digging deep and not holding back – the connection – that’s the essence of this rare and addictive quality. For those two legends it was also about broken lives and flawed psyches, for Connelli it’s something else: a heart and generosity that are so close to the surface they are virtually visible; and definitely tangible.

Judi Connelli at the Civic

It’s not about excessive histrionics, however, Connelli is way too canny and tasteful to rely on the simple Big Finish. An unlikely highlight of this show of exhilarating halves is a little known song by Dillie Keane. Out of Practice is about a middle-aged widow who goes out on a date for the first time in ages and is afraid that in matters of the heart she is “out of practice”. It’s a mini-epic of the human condition and eternal optimism – and Connelli’s handling of it is a bittersweet masterpiece.

Backing her in this endeavour is the celebrated Michael Tyack; his work on piano somehow leading inevitably to the final encore and honeyed sing-along reverie of As Time Goes By. It would have made Dooley Wilson smile.

If EM Forster had ever seen and heard Judi Connelli in cabaret he could have written of it, “Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer.” Instead he had to go to the bother of writing all of Howard’s End to achieve a similar effect.

We miss you already Jude, don’t stay away too long. And by the way, she has one blue eye and one that’s mainly hazel and brown: a true witch.

 

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