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!