TW:  Sui­cide, over­dose, trau­ma

I reviewed a pro­duc­tion of La Voix Humaine in Feb­ru­ary.  It’s been a strange worm­hole of a year and it feels like a mil­lion years ago but also maybe yes­ter­day that I was sit­ting in Suite Gallery, expe­ri­enc­ing this piece for the first time.  Writ­ing this review with the last one so fresh in my mind despite ten months between them, it would be easy (lazy), to just draw com­par­isons between the two pro­duc­tions.  It cer­tain­ly would do a dis­ser­vice to both.  I guess there’s a bal­ance to be struck, but I’ll try to write specif­i­cal­ly about Thurs­day’s expe­ri­ence.

Thomas de Mal­let Burgess is the gen­er­al direc­tor of NZ Opera, and I heard him speak about his aspi­ra­tions when the 2020 sea­son was launched.  2020 marked the 20th anniver­sary of NZO as a nation­al organ­i­sa­tion, and while that was momen­tous, de Mal­let Burgess acknowl­edged the chal­lenge of bring­ing opera to an increas­ing­ly small­er audi­ence, in an age where it’s not a wide­ly appre­ci­at­ed genre.  He talked about the onus to make opera acces­si­ble and excit­ing for a more diverse audi­ence, and to pro­vide oppor­tu­ni­ties for new artists and venues.  This vision is one I can entire­ly sup­port — opera as an insti­tu­tion is won­der­ful, but it needs to evolve and acknowl­edge the iden­ti­ties and nar­ra­tives of Aotearoa as well as uphold­ing the tra­di­tions of the past.  Hear, hear!!!

And then came Covid.

The abil­i­ty to once again con­gre­gate and expe­ri­ence art is a true joy, and we watch the rest of the world con­tin­ue to fight (or claim to) the pan­dem­ic from a very priv­i­leged posi­tion in our #nzhell­hole.  We learned new ways to watch shows over lock­down, but it’s still a relief to do it in per­son and togeth­er.

The Human Voice is a one-act mon­odra­ma with one per­former and one musi­cian, com­posed by Poulenc in 1958.  A lit­tle his­to­ry can be found in my last review, if you’re inter­est­ed, but, Spoil­ers.

The venue was the Ohtel, on Ori­en­tal Bay.  I’ve often won­dered what it was like inside, and can report that the suite was very com­fort­able, the bath­room was seri­ous­ly deli­cious, and the staff were super love­ly and pro­fes­sion­al.

There were three rows of chairs for the small audi­ence in the suite, prob­a­bly where a cou­ple of arm­chairs and a small table would nor­mal­ly be by the win­dow.  The bed was large, there were cute knick­knacks on built-in shelves, and the light­ing was moody once the glar­ing spots were turned off.

Hid­ing behind the bath­room cur­tain was a key­board, played by music direc­tor David Kel­ly with sen­si­tiv­i­ty and per­fect tim­ing.  No small accom­plish­ment, con­sid­er­ing he could­n’t see his singer and is pre­sum­ably used to a bigass grand piano.

Aman­da Atlas is an impres­sive dra­mat­ic per­former, with a rich and pow­er­ful sopra­no voice.  Some­how all that charis­ma and vocal force was com­pressed into a small­er, more brit­tle woman, Elle (She), as she weath­ers one last phone con­ver­sa­tion with the lover who has left her.  The Human Voice fol­lows Elle as she waits for that phonecall, and along the com­plex emo­tion­al path the con­ver­sa­tion takes.

It was quite incred­i­ble to know what Aman­da Atlas is capa­ble of vocal­ly, and to see it restrained inside the char­ac­ter, only burst­ing out occa­sion­al­ly when Elle’s reac­tions could not be con­tained.  It’s no mean feat to main­tain depth and pitch and tone and feel­ing at a low vol­ume, while curled up on a bed, instead of belt­ing freely into a huge the­atre.  Bra­va!  And Atlas’ per­for­mance of Elle’s jour­ney through self-delu­sion and anguish, try­ing to main­tain the impres­sion of “cop­ing” and even flirt­ing with the guy who’s CLEARLY lying like a dead dog, is quite the trip.

This is where I can’t help but com­pare this pro­duc­tion to the one in Feb­ru­ary.  De Mal­let Burgess chose to direct this piece as an epi­taph.  Elle gives up, drinks the wine, takes the pills, and gen­tly fades out at the end.  She might wake up tomor­row maybe, but her intent not to is clear.  Her jour­ney is a slide into despair, and her side of the con­ver­sa­tion is sub­mis­sive and solic­i­tous.  I want to punch her nar­cis­sis­tic ex just for mak­ing her apol­o­gise and take the blame when she’s clear­ly the vic­tim.  SHAME.

Feb­ru­ary’s pro­duc­tion gave me an Elle with strength as well as fragili­ty, the poten­tial to heal from the rela­tion­ship, and some moments of love­ly sar­casm and rage.  Sure, there could absolute­ly be anoth­er sui­cide attempt, but there could also be a far brighter future for her.  Those extra emo­tion­al lay­ers allowed for a greater vocal range, too.

The dif­fer­ences come down to choic­es made by the direc­tors (and one would hope, the per­form­ers as well), and de Mal­let Burgess chose to direct a swan­song.  So it was sad, and it was upset­ting, and it was hard to watch.  That’s good; art should make you feel things, and I def­i­nite­ly did.

De Mal­let Burgess also direct­ed Eight Songs For A Mad King in March, and it’s fan­tas­tic that these dynam­ic mod­ern pro­duc­tions are being staged, with their chal­leng­ing sub­ject mat­ter and messy emo­tions, as well as the beloved old stan­dards.

The Human Voice is sold out for the rest of the Welling­ton Sea­son, but there are two shows in Taupo on Novem­ber 5th, and six in Auck­land, from Novem­ber 10–12.   Book here if you can make one!