SYDFEST 2016 - THE RABBITS
THE RABBITS, Sydney Festival and Opera Australia at the Roslyn Packer Theatre, 14-24 January 2016. Photography from the Melbourne season by Jeff Busby.
After a world premiere season at the 2015 Perth Festival through commissioning company Barking Gecko and director John Sheedy, and another outing at the Melbourne Festival, also last year, to say The Rabbits is “much anticipated” is an understatement. Expectations could hardly be higher and it’s a tribute to the work of all involved that it doesn’t disappoint in this Sydney Festival season.
Although the original book – illustrated by Shaun Tan and written by John Marsden – wasn’t intended as a children’s picture book, it has become that and more over the 15 years since first publication. Now a classic and imprinted onto the mind’s eyes of two generations, it was a crazy idea to put it on stage – and even crazier to set it to music of the operatic kind.
And the multi-talented and reasonably crazy Kate Miller-Heidke was the perfect choice to pull it off. Her music and presence as the narrator Bird (arrangements and additional music by Iain Grandage) are at once effervescent and grounding. The stark sadness underlying the original story is never lost despite much amusement and the extreme cuteness of the Marsupials and the haughty pomposity of the Rabbits (brilliant set and costume design by Gabriela Tylesova, glorious lighting by Trent Suidgeest).
The tale is a simple one – and universally familiar although set in Australia. The Marsupials (Hollie Andrew, Jessica Hitchcock, Lisa Maza, Marcus Corowa and David Leha) live a happy, hoppy life in the sunshine on and around a nice, friendly mountain (a central spiral structure on an otherwise empty stage that looks like a giant chiselled shaving of Huon pine).
The Bird lives at the top of the spiral and tells the story which all goes wrong with the arrival of The Rabbits (Kanen Breen, Nicholas Jones, Christopher Hillier, Simon Meadows and Robert Mitchell). They are – as the anti-advertisement for the army once put it – keen to see the world, find new places, make friends with the locals and then kill them. Rather than a simple massacre, however, the Rabbits take the Marsupials’ children, thus inflicting a slow and agonising death of the heart.
It’s all set to Miller-Heidke’s quirky music – mixing elements of baroque, burlesque, Gilbert & Sullivan and straight out lyrical passages involving trios and a quartet of voices. Lally Katz has miraculously transformed the original minimal text of some 250 words into a comprehensible and pleasing libretto whose wit and musicality is relished by the cast (Kanen Breen in particular, no surprise there).
The semi-on-stage band is integral to the action and is led by musical director Isaac Hayward (piano, cello and piano accordion) with Callum G’Froerer on trumpet, Keir Nuttall (guitar and electronics), Stephanie Zarka (violin) and bass and tuba (Andrew Johnson).
The piece is both faithful to the original book and illustrations while expanding it beautifully. Adults and kids of most ages couldn’t fail to be enchanted and enthralled for the 60 minutes it takes to colonise and ruin a sunburnt country. It would be good to see The Rabbits take the place in the repertoire of the imported Magic Flute (much as it’s also a delight) as the high-class family summer show for Opera Australia.
