Lust, Murder and Revenge. 

The Don is a bas­tard­iz­a­tion of Don Gio­vanni, and I mean that in a very good way. One man, accom­pan­ied by a musi­cian, sev­er­al films, and a pup­pet, aims to recre­ate the entirety of Moz­art’s Don Gio­vanni in just under an hour and thor­oughly suc­ceeds.

This show is an hour of glor­i­ous man­i­cism, of many, many accents, and of dubi­ous light­ing cues. Though the music per­formed is from the ori­gin­al opera, all the songs have been trans­lated into Eng­lish – to quite a hil­ari­ous res­ult. In a loc­al take on “Mad­am­ina, il cata­logo è questo”, Don Gio­van­ni’s lov­ers spring not from places fur­ther afield, but from Christ­ch­urch, Taupo, and (most of all) Auck­land. In that same vein, one par­tic­u­lar song I enjoyed was when Don Gio­vanni tried to seduce a young ingenue with Nelly’s ‘Hot in Herre’.

Solo shows are a fab­ulous example of just what people can do when put under pres­sure on stage. Our lone act­or plays six (widely dif­fer­ent) char­ac­ters – Don Gio­vanni him­self finds solace in a can of Lynx, while Donna Elvira coats her­self lib­er­ally in fans – as well as sword­fight­ing (with him­self) and part­ner-dan­cing (with him­self). It was a joy to watch, and it is a won­der that he man­aged to spend an hour run­ning about wildly on stage without end­ing up totally win­ded.

The Don is not just for opera fan­at­ics – and can def­in­itely be enjoyed by all. My theatre-going com­pan­ion and I have had dif­fer­ent exper­i­ences with Don Gio­vanni - he knows it well, I do not – and we both thor­oughly enjoyed The Don.

Take a chance on some opera that is not your usu­al, and go and see The Don today!

 

The Don is being per­formed at Te Aua­ha in Wel­ling­ton from today through Sat­urday the 14th of July. Book your tick­ets on the Te Aua­ha web­site here.