Happiness

I am absolutely delighted as I have had more than 4000 hits although I haven't posted since the 2012 Olympics. Now I am ready to jump into the postings game once again with a 2013 series. Sir Haulway Barrack- Jones has been dispatched to the Michael Burns Kennedy Tales Tales site, while this one is reserved for stage, performance, film and the occasional visual arts. I'll keep the old boy on the  address below and make this one more legit.
http://makingwhoopee.blogspot.com.au/

A Post with a View



 Colette Mann (left) and  Roxanna McDonald cross the human divide while (below)  Cirque Du Soleil go up the wall



Barrack-Jones: Warm Love & Big Leaps

Head Full of Love. Stars Roxanne McDonald and Colette Mann. Queensland Theatre Company. Cremorne Theatre QPAC. Till August 11.

Ovo. Cirque Du Soleil. Hamilton. 54 artists from 16 countries. Till September 2^nd.

Barrack-Jones rounding off a busy week with a quick look at two shows with strikingly contrasting styles and themes, but equally deserving of attention in this busy theatrical scene.

Alana Valentine’s Head Full of Love is a two-woman show, which explores the need for communication and understanding in a world where there’s too little of the damn stuff.

I mean we all – in theory – speak the same language here in Australia, but dash it all if sometimes it would seem that we’re living half way up - or maybe at the top - of the tower of Babylon.

We’re talking to each other right enough – sometimes shouting even – but the words seem to come out in a torrent of strange tongues, which inevitably fail to hit the mark.

Tilly Nappuljari (Roxanne McDonald) and Nessa Tavistock (Colette Mann) would appear to be worlds apart, when they come across each other at the annual Alice Springs Beanie Festival, but somehow manage to connect in a an engaging and amusing 90-minute conversation.

Big city girl Nessa is running away from a host of demons, while Roxanne is calmly knitting a beanie for the festival while coping with the trauma of spending four hours a day - three days a week - on a dialysis machine away from country and family.

Roxanne’s indigenous heritage makes it more than four times likely that she would be in this precarious situation, despite the fact that her life has been largely drug and alcohol free.

It’s something that’s simply in the indigenous DNA, but that doesn’t make her a push over and the women experience a sometimes feisty, but ultimately rewarding relationship.

Despite the subject matter, Head Full of Love is alive with good humour and is as likely to bring a smile to the lips as much as a tear to the eye.

There’s even a design for a zig zag beanie among the promotional material for the play, which is something of a triumph for all concerned including QTC artistic director Wesley Enoch who put this little masterpiece on stage.

So see the play and then head off to Alice Springs for the beanie festival when it pops up again next year.

These remote communities need our support in areas such as community health.

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Barrack-Jones is more often than not driven up the wall when it comes to the circus, but as most of the world knows Canada’s Cirque Du Soleil is in his a class of its own.

The crew have been coming to Australia – and Brisbane - since 1999 and this time around it’s brought a piece called Ovo (that’s Portuguese for egg) , which is a little strange as the two hour extravaganza focuses on the world of insects.

A cast and crew of more than 54 young athletic men and women, from 16 countries, present a spectacularly entertaining night of Olympic proportions on the floor, in the air and even up the wall.

Cirque Du Soleil exists in a parallel universe where anything is possible as the young bodies in stylish – but familiar – Cirque Du Soleil costumes throw themselves around without doing themselves damage (a miracle me thinks).

It’s a day in the life of insects – bugs, ladybirds, fleas, dragonflies, mossies etc – working, eating, crawling, fluttering, fighting and even falling in love.

The love story is left to the clowns, which is an interesting thought.

The action begins with the arrival of a stranger carrying an egg comes into their mist in what the circus folk call the enigma and cycle of life.

The first and second acts both end with two of the most remarkable displays that Barrack-Jones has ever seen under the blue and yellow  Big Top.

Those four young men under the New Jesry street light who would become The Four Seasons. Frankie Valli (second from left). 

Barrack-Jones: Sherry Baby or Sherry Bottle? Or Both?

Jersey Boys –The story of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. Music Bob Gaudio. Lyrics Bob Crewe. Lyric Theatre Brisbane. Tickets available until September 16.

Barrack-Jones here musing on that proverbial literary line from my old pal LP. Hartley who scribbled down ‘the past is a foreign country they do things differently there.’

That might be true of the distant past but strangely enough recent times – such as the 1960s – seem more like an alien world even though I was screwing around then (and I do mean that in a poet sense).

I remember walking through New Jersey in the fall of ’62 with a sassy girl on my arm and the prospect of seeing a movie and, perhaps later, winning her over with an ice cream bar.

The whole seduction was likely to cost 76 cents for two movie tickets – I think the film was  the sci-fi frightener The Blob – and an ice cream for 11 cents (I’d brought my own cream sherry hip flask).

 As we walked I heard four young men singing under a street light something about Sherry and wondering if they’d guessed what was in my  pocket.

Their Sherry was a girl, who had been woven into a song by Bon Gaudio for a new singing quartet The Four Seasons, and it was number one in what was then called the hit parade.

Now 50 years and 75 millions record sales later the boys are being recreated on stage in Brisbane in a celebration of their chequered story simply called Jersey Boys.

The show is the 19^th longest running Broadway musical and has won a swag of awards including best musical in New York (a Tony) and London (an Olivier).

The songs are almost pumped out in heart racing fashion as one hit falls over another in a remarkable musical cavalcade which includes December ’63 (Oh What a Night), Ragdoll, Big Girls Don’t Cry. Walk Like a Man and the fifth most played tune on the wireless Can’t Take My Eyes of You.

The show would be a terrific concert with the songs alone, but it appears that these squeaky clean lads in button down shirts, drain pipe pants, neat ties and tight coats lived extremely colourful and sometimes dangerous lives

I know the feeling.

Their story, which includes violence, sex, profanity, murder and even jail along with runs-in with gangsters and on the home front, girlfriends and  families, reminds me of the time when we took our stories from the Bible.

Only the Old Testament – as demonstrated in the middle-ages in shows such the Wakefield Mystery Plays – had as much sex and violence and in-your-face confrontation as Jersey Boys.

When we toured our mystery plays, all those years ago, they were touted as objects of lessons in morality, but nowadays these melodramatic real-life stories are more a demonstration of how talent wins out over adversity.

(Oh how I miss the Middle Ages, although they were home to some of our most smelly centuries, but I digress.)

The boys, as depicted in the show,  have their up and downs – and three of them finally drop-out for various reasons – but the songs carry on (as does Frankie Valli) and everyone comes out of it smelling of roses.

As indeed my sassy friend and I did rolling around in the garden rose beds after the movie as the four boys’ mournful harmonies could still  be heard in the near distance.

Ah now romantic.

I believe that now Mr. Valli is 78 – and still playing somewhere – but yours truly (The Universal Thespian) is also just warming up and looking for new possibilities despite 1000 years on the road

I think I might return to the Lyric for another dose of Jersey Boys and see if maybe….Well there was a rather attractive young waitress in the foyer  bar ….but never you mind about that (as they say in Queensland). 



Sir Haulway Barrack-Jones (above left) relaxing in a concentrating mood and the actor in character as Charley's Aunt (from Brazil where the nuts come from) in a dress rehearsal for the '95 summer tour



 

Above Madam Bovary's knockin' shop off London's Cromwell Road in Robbers Lane  (according to Barrack-Jones).  



Top: The Gentlemen of Japan
Right: Sully (left) and Gilly
Bottom: The beautiful Ruby Preece in '28



Barrack-Jones – The Mikado Proper

Barrack-Jones back on the job after what’s been a truly topsy-turvy week on the Brisbane theatre scene.

By the end of it I do believe it was only the foyer bar holding me up, and that wouldn’t be the first time let me tell you.

I think it’s time to polish off Opera Queensland’s The Mikado, which looks set to do business that would have made dear old Richard D’Oyly Carte   proud.

I reckon that young Gilfedder – Eugene – would have made a terrific Victorian patter man and challenger to Fred Sullivan – Sully’s brother – who was one of the top comic performers of his age.

Poor old Fred died at the age of 40 leaving behind a wife and eight kids, but Sully did the right thing and looked after them all.

I digress.

Although young Gilfedder as Ko-Ko added a few contemporary references to his Little List song and there were plenty of other modern asides – such as the Wandering Minstrel Nanki-Poo  - Dominic Walsh – flogging CDs of his work it doesn’t matter.

The Mikado was never really grounded in the era in which it was created – it premiered in the winter of ’85 – and little to do with the real Japan.

Although Victorian Londoners were fascinated with the country – which was just reveling itself to the world – Sully used all that exotic stuff as a vehicle to send-up the Pommy establishment.

There were all sorts of stories about how  Gilly got the idea for the Mikado, including being inspired by a Japanese sword in his study and some oriental community in Knightsbridge, but really it was all about keeping Sully on side.

   

As I said earlier, both men were getting to the end of the tether and Sully had already knocked back one suggested scenario because it had too much magic in it.

The Mikado is really a nonsense story about a Lord high executioner who has no one to execute, a love sick boy called Nanki- Poo and three little maids who are dangerously close to being what the Yanks call jail bait.

The virtue of young girls was a cause for some concern at the time as the age of constant had been raised from 13 to 16 in the autumn of ‘85 in a bid to stop the terrible traffic in child prostitution.

Look, I love a pretty young ankle – don’t get me wrong – but I do have one or two morals and a line in the sand which I keep a sharp eye on.

Anyway, this modern director fellow Stuart Maunder (AM would you believe. Is that when he gets out of bed I wonder? ) has obviously had a lot of fun with it.

The production is fast furious and a hoot to boot.

It wasn’t Gilly & Sully’s last opera or even their last successful one – that was The Grand Duke and The Gondoliers respectively – but the relationship was as strained as a constipated elephant.

I said I’d tell about the dreadful carpet row which all took place some years later didn’t I?

Well, as you probably know,  all the Gilly & Sully operas were known as The Savoy Operas because that was the boys’ own theatre, where they were premiered.

 Their producer D’Oyly Carte reckoned new carpets were needed and Sully was on his side because  Carte had promised to stage his serious opera, Ivanhoe, but Gilly thought it a waste of money.

There were other financial rows and one thing led to another as a simple disagreement became a serious of blazing rows worthy of the great fire of London.

Anyway, it wasn’t long after that The Grand Duke flopped and the boys decided to give it away.

They’d created 14 operettas.

The last interesting anecdote from the Gilly & Sully story is the way poor old Gilly – who created all those fabulous topsy-turvy stories - died.

It was in the spring of ’11 when 74-year-old Gilly was giving swimming lessons to two charming young local lasses.

One of them, 17-year- old Ruby Preece got into a spot of trouble and so the gallant scribe dived in to save her and promptly died of a heart attack.

Such is death.

The macabre, but amusing, twist is that when Ruby grew-up she went into bat for the other side if you get my drift.

I said Barrack-Jones had a line in the sand but nothing about being PC.

Ha, ha, ha.




Paul Eddington got his start in the mid 1950s in the TV show Robin Hood and then (below) came a call to higher office

  



Barrack-Jones – Yes, Prime Minister & the Mikado

Barrack-Jones back in the firing lines with some pithy comments on the stage version of Yes, Prime Minister and Opera Queensland’s G&S offering The Mikado.

I can remember once at the court of Henry VIII in the winter of '45, this rather spirited jester made some rather funny, no witty, and pointed, remarks about the king’s appearance.

They were brilliant.

A natural.

The 16^th Century’s answer to Seinfeld.

A genius.

No a comic genius.

We all laughed heartedly, and no one more so than His Majesty, which created a really relaxed air around the palace and made us all feel as if we were getting on famously.

What a wonderful world.

An enlightened court.

A court ahead of its time.

The next time I saw the jester he still had a huge grin on his face, perhaps a few more tears, but sadly his head was no longer attached to his body as it went flying through the air into the River Thames.

This has always made me rather nervy when it comes to satire.

Having said that I must confess that Brisbane in the 21^st century seems to be both relaxed and safe, at least until the next Federal Election.

So I was able to sit back and enjoy Anthony Jay and Jonathan Lynn’s theatrical lampooning of the British political establishment in the stage version of their celebrated TV shows Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister.

The original TV stars – Paul Eddington and Nigel Hawthorne - have sadly left planet earth while Derek Fowlds who played Bernard, has topped the 74 mark.

I have always particularly loved the remark made by top bureaucrat Sir Humphrey to his Minister, and later PM, that when he was out on a limb it was ‘courageous.’

This reminds me of Goodish King Harry noting that his jester was a:

‘ man of infinite bravery whose head, but unfortunately not his shoulders, were above the courage of his foolish conviction.’

We all laughed with  a tear rolling down our cheeks – but without really seeing the joke – and none more so than the poor fellow whose humour tuned out to be too cutting edge for the times.

Yes, Prime Minister, which features some stout fellows – all bearing three names – in the principal roles including Mark Owen-Taylor (the PM), Tony Llewellyn-Jones (Sir Humphrey) and John Lloyd Fillingham (Bernard).

I have a strong affection for actors with three names as I used to have that exact amount until I became Sir Haulway Barrack-Jones, which gave me four sometime in the late ‘90s.

The performances not only bring the play into the present, but also add some farce in the second act worthy of one of the classics such as Charlie’s Aunt (which I remember with great affection also as I toured a regional version in the autumn of ‘92).

On a sad note I recall that the original Jim Hacker, Paul Eddington, was performing in HMS Pinafore here in Brisbane in ‘87 when he was diagnosed with the cutaneous T cell lymphoma which ultimately claimed his life.

Eddington once said, ‘you don’t have to believe in regicide to play Macbeth,’ and he was certainly a much more courageous man than his Hacker character appeared at times.

This new production of Yes, Prime Minister tackling the vexing problem of reconciling practical politics against moral imperatives.

In this version the morality concerns sex impropriety, but in real Australian political life there’s greater moral dilemmas to consider.

For instance is being in power more important than the life and death of others? In Australia I wonder.

I digress.

Now The  Mikado. Next posting. Just like the media we promise but take our time to deliver………



This is what folk see of Barrack-Jones when there's trouble brewing



Ambrose Bierce contemplating going out for a Mexican take-away

Barrack-Jones – Well here’s a howdy do.

Hail fellows and females well met – Sir Haulway Barrack-Jones here with my first report on the Brisbane theatre landscape having been shunted-off to three shows in my inaugural week of reviewing.

Well, here’s a howdy do, but more of that later when I get around to talking about Opera Queensland’s new production of The Mikado, which yours truly first saw in the winter of ’85.

That’s when W.S. Gilbert – Gilly – and Sir Arthur Sullivan’s – Sully- collaboration was on extremely shaky grounds as both of them were getting to the end of their tether.

The one thing the two men had most in common – apart from certain warmth (and in Sully’s case a particularly active form of it) for the ladies – was a remarkably short tether.

Perhaps the shortest tether ever in the history of the British theatre. Although theatre people, being theatre people, that’s a tough call.

The Mikado, however, was week’s end following two rather different shows, which demonstrates what contrasts are available within the Brisbane theatre scene.

The week started at the Judith Wright Centre of Contemporary Arts – more affectionately and practically called The Judy – with a strange 60-minute piece called The Disappearances Project.

In appears that 30,000 persons going missing in Australia each year, although 86 per cent of them turn-up within a week.

I can understand that as I have often gone missing, most notably during police raids, bar room brawls, and at times which it appears that I am either going to receive a good bollocking or be in demand of money with, or without, menaces.

However, I must say I generally pop back when things cool down, particularly if there’s a charming ankle or pretty face involved or, even, a couple of conciliatory vinos.

Mediation through the consumption of alcohol can be extremely risky unless so much is tossed down that the participants collapse into an exhausted slumber.

I digress.

Getting back to the show, it consisted of two actors – a man and women – facing the audience for around 70-minutes and recounting the pain and misery of those left behind and in their own words.

It’s all based on research – very academic – and while some thought it pulled at the heart strings, others were not so sure. One chap said he believed it was a ‘shocking example of non-theatre’ as the performers had just put together a few lines lifted from research.

My argument to that is that it was in the telling as I’ve heard fellows reading from the Karma Sutra who have sent audiences to sleep, while Marie Lloyd singing the Come into the Garden Maud back in the ‘90s had the chaps placing their toppers on their laps for the sake of decency.

Stimulating stuff.

I digress.     

Watching the concerns of the family and friends of the missing - played against a back drop of dull suburban pictures and a droning soundtrack – made me think of two famous cases from the world of letters.

I can still remember the hullaballoo when Agatha (Christie) went missing in Christmas ’26 for 11 days and turned up in Harrogate, Yorkshire, simply taking the waters.

That’s the town with the motto Avx Celebris Fontibus or a citadel famous of its springs if you prefer.

I told her at the time that going to Harrogate was a complete waste of doing a runner.

“If it had been me I’d have been off to the South of France to take in the vineyards,” I quipped.

She ignored that but then she was always a fairly logical sort who hadn’t much time for my hedonistic preferences.

I think that was being married to the dashing Colonel Archie Christie who won her heart when serving in the Royal Flying Corp and then abandoned her for a certain Miss Nancy Neele.


No. The real mystery was that happened to the American genius and author of The Devil’s Dictionary, Ambrose Bierce, whom I last  saw in  the summer of ’13 when he jumped on a horse and galloped away.

I shouted after him, “where are you off to Amie?’ and in typical fashion he shrugged and retorted casually over his shoulder, ‘Just off to Mexico to see if I can pick up a take away for supper.”

He never returned but left us some remarkable works including this favourite line:

 “A total abstainer is one who abstains from everything but abstention, and especially in activity in the affairs of others.”

Brilliant stuff. Wish my creditors could read that and take it into account.  

Mum used to talk about the disappearing trick, which performed so well whenever Dad was coming back from a late-night at the pub, but never realised it was so popular.    




Yum-Yum (Kristy Swift), Ko-Ko (Eugene Gilfedder) and Hanki-Poo (Dominic Walsh)  try and impress Sir Haulway Barrack-Jones at the opening of  Opera Queensland's updated version of The Mikado

  I am off to the Opera Queensland production of  The Mikado this evening with Sir HaulwayBarrack-Jones in tow. He will be writing something for me by Monday. Barrack-Jones, who is also known as the Universal Thespian, was at the premier of this production in  in the winter of 1885 and has fond memories of the occasion. He also was quite familiar with W.S. Gilbert and Sir Arthur Sullivan, whom he affectionately calls Gilly and Sully. The old scallywag, who has been around the traps for a thousand years or more, will throw light on these giants of the musical genre.  He has amusing recollections of the famous carpet row at the Savoy as well as Sully's last brave, but foolhardy, act . In the meantime here's a picture from the show.

Sir Hulway Barrack-Jones is coming to this site. Here's a picture of him in happier times. I have agreed to allow him to use this site to promote his new show The Universial Actor. Sir Hulway (pronounced Hallway) is the eternal actor  who has been with us for all time. He has a wealth of stories, a confidence much above his capabiltiities and the ability to comment on the past, present and future of our great industry without worrying too much about detail. His first theatrical outing was Calvary and his most recent included Hairspray. He says the simularities were striking. This will become his site in the new week, and thereafter, and he will offer a smorgasbord of offerings which he one day hopes to shape into something which sounds remotely intelligent. Between times he has agreed to comment on local productions in his own distinctive style.

Theatre: Going To-and-Fro Between the Fo and Flu.

Carol Burns as Elizabeth points the way to the 16th Century satirical tradition known as Commedia dell'arte

Elizabeth almost by chance a woman. Stars Carol Burns, Eugene Gilfedder, SarahKennedy, Jason Klarwein, Dash Kruck, John Rodgers.  Directed by Wesley Enoch. Queensland Theatre Company. Powerhouse. Continues till June 24.

It has been more than a week since my last posting and, thanks to a bout of

the flue, I am now in catch-up mode as I try to make-up for lost time.

However, the one thing about life is that it doesn’t stand still for anyone – not even royalty as I noticed the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee concert went ahead as Prince Phillip was carted off to hospital – so it’s up to us all to keep dancing as fast as we can for as long as we can.

Last week I was talking about Opera Australia staging The Magic Flue – and describing it as a tad highbrow – and this week it might appear, at first, that I have gone a little lowbrow with Dario Fo.

The Italian Nobel Peace Prize winner, who is still rattling around the planet somewhere, was born March 24, 1926, which makes him a month older then the UK’s Queen Elizabeth II.

While shows such as Elizabeth, almost by chance a woman, appear vulgar, outspoken and absurdist, they are actually well crafted examples of a satirical theatre tradition that goes back centuries.

Elizabeth, which features esteemed British actress Carols Burns in the title role and centres on England’s Elizabeth I, affectionately known as Good Queen Bess, draws on the Italian Commedia dell’arte as a starting point.

One only has to look at Fo’s history – within the theatre and elsewhere – to see that his life has been a rich political experience beginning with his work with his father in the anti-fascist Resistance in World War II.

It would seem - and my confirming source is that sometimes vulnerable cyber reference Wikipedia -  Fo and Son were instrumental in helping various individuals, including allied soldiers and Jewish scientists, escape to Switzerland.

Even in the post war era, Fo was walking a thin line turning Biblical stories into political satire – an extreme thing to do in Catholic Italy –  writing plays from the 1950s.

However, I was first introduced to his work decades later in Brisbane.

For a while in the 1980s,  Fo’s work was extremely popular with the TN Company, which at that time was a major ‘serious’ dramatic force within the Brisbane arts community.

I recall productions of Raspberries and Trumpets and the Accidental Death of an Anarchist among others. His most successful play, Buffo, translated into 30 languages, never made Brisbane to my knowledge.

Naturally, serious theatre students have always embraced the Commedia dell’arte, with its references to stock characters, social and political satire, improvisation and a chance to connect with western theatre’s first tentative professional outing.

What I particularly liked about this revamped version of Fo, freely adapted and translated by Luke Devenish and Louise Fox, is the language plucked from the past and made into contemporary relevance.

However, I do concede that the two hour show –  revolving around absurdist goings on between Elizabeth and her various courtiers whom in real life would have been flung (or worse) into the tower – does wear a trifle thin in the narrative department.

The basic idea is that Elizabeth, whom Flo asserts was no virgin but rather waiting for her lover, the  treacherous Earl of Essex, is old and dying and doing it in a loud and boisterous, bawdy way.

(What a way to go if you still have the strength)

Throw in William Shakespeare (whom the Queen believes is really writing about her), a wordy bureaucrat, a patronising maid, a transvestite and a tiresome boy and you’re got a spicy mix of seemingly outrageous nonsense.

But the language – and some notable theatrical antics from the likes of Carol Burns, Dash Kruck Eugene Gilfedder, Sarah Kennedy and Jason Klarwein along with musical help and added contributions from John Rodgers  – made it first brilliant, then bearable and then, well, it’s time to go.

The last 15 minutes are a bit wearisome.

There’s been a bit of twitter chatter lately – believe it or not – about the viability of political satire, but I reckon, like all forms of theatre, it has its place.

Like most things in life, as John Lennon once wrote, whatever gets you through the night.

I was brought up in a British satirical tradition and recall, as a young man, dipping into a broad range of absurd comic traditions including playwright NF Simpson,  radio’s The Goons and later TV’s Monty Python Flying Circus.

I think the British tradition was more easy-going, more socially-driven and less a reaction to politics as, I believe, the country in the later part of the 20^th century displayed an even political temper.

Of course, individuals who believe they were the victims of injustice would disagree with that point of view, but once again it falls back on personal experience.

For once, I haven’t come across any reviews of Elizabeth, which I would particularly recommend, but then I haven’t been looking too closely.

However, those looking for a review in a sentence – they have their place as well – might describe it as Ab Fab meets Black Adder with a dash of the Goons and Monty Python (all English comic references, I know) thrown in for good measure.

Opera Australia: Right, Everyone Join In On The Chorus.



Milica Illic (left) as Queen of the Night and Taryn Fiebig as Pamina in The Magic Flute. Photo Justin Nicholas.


I remember an opera comedienne who would hit a high note, then catch her breath and shout at the audience, ‘come on everyone join in on the chorus,’ or something to that effect.

There’s something about opera with its divas, unlikely overweight soprano and tenor lovers, stodgy performances and general pomposity, which encourages the spoof, the send-up and a certain amount of derision.

Or at least that used to be the case, when opera was at the top of the mountain of high art and sponsors and supporters were perceived to be an elite group of precious patrons, but the world is changing.

Nowadays, a new wave of artistic directors, working with theatrically aware directors, is bringing the art form from  those rarified peaks of artistic endeavor and into the people’s paddock.

In short, OA aspires to live in the love of the common people.

There was nowhere that was more obvious then in Brisbane the past couple of weeks, when audiences were treated to Opera Australia’s two most recent success stories.

OA’s artistic director, Lyndon Terracini, is bringing the company back to the Queensland capital for the time first in more than two decades – the last visit was 1988 – with two state-of-art productions designed with mainstream appeal in mind.

The key to the productions’ success is as much in the direction as the versatility of the performers, who can sing as well as act, dance and in some cases engage in breathtaking gymnastics.

I am talking about ‘directing stars’ from the world stage in the shape of The Lion King’s Julie Taymor and Australia’s own behind-the-camera matinee idol Baz Luhrmann. 

Today old Alfred Hitchcok would have had to share the spotlight among the living stars of the director's chair.

The first in this double-header was a completely overhauled Mozart classic, The Magic Flute, which was trimmed down to two hours – with interval – and could easily hold its own in the highly competitive Broadway market place.

This magical piece of spin, which saw Mozart’s 1791 masterpiece morph into a slice of family entertainment which would look quite comfortable next to The Lion King or even Mary Poppins, was the brainchild of Julie Taymor (pictured).

The work came to life at New York’s Metropolitan Opera and was given its Australian renaissance by Matthew Barclay and as they say in the ‘op-biz’ it’s sure to irritate the purists.

This work is a theatrical cavalcade of colour, whimsy and joy as the troupe winds its way through a shortened version of Mozart’s mysterious work with its links to Masonic traditions.

Julie Taymor is well equipped to create this achievement as she has what cricket followers call, ‘ the runs on the board’,  with The Lion King breaking records at the Broadway box office, to the tune of more than $853 million, and now the seventh most successful show on Broadway.

(The most successful is still The Phantom of the Opera.)

The director, who also brought us The Beatles inspired movie love story, Across the Universe, also has a swag of awards including Tony Awards for direction and costume design with The Lion King.

While The Magic Flute runs a crisp and to-the-point 120 minutes, Baz Luhrmann’s adaptation of Benjamin Britten’s A Midsummer Summer Night’s Dream takes a more meandering route.

The show runs for more than three hours – with two intervals – but once again the cast demonstrates a broad sweep of performance skills.

Baz Luhrmann (pictured), who set his Dream in India around 1923, coaxed some wonderful acting performances out of his singing cast and draped his production in eye-catching fashion both in the set and costume departments.

The designers were Bill Marron and his wife and long-term professional partner Catherin Martin.

Once again stage and film director, Baz Luhrmann, is the very model of a modern operatic practitioner and brings a great sense of skill, crafts and originality to the medium.

His big screen credits, for those who need reminding, include Strictly Ballroom, Moulin Rouge and Australia, but he’s also had a good track record with the OA.

His La Boheme on Broadway back in 2002 won three Tony Awards.

The OA is back in Brisbane with a bang.

The double header season runs until Friday and Saturday (June 8 and 9) but there’s talk of more to come.

Here’s a sample from A Midsummer Night’s Dream http://vimeo.com/9542385

A scene from the Dream. Photo Branco Garcia