The Stage

Bliss

Published Friday 3 September 2010 at 15:38 by Thom Dibdin

Musically dense and morally ambiguous, Brett Dean and Amanda Holden’s operatic adaptation of Peter Carey’s novel is a powerful and intense experience. With a decisive filleting of the plot they get right inside the story of successful advertising agency boss Harry Joy, whose heart-attack opens his eyes to the hell he lives in and leaves him determined to find some kind of atonement.

Director Neil Armfield accentuates those broad strokes, with a bold production for Opera Australia that has no room for subtleties of character - and often simply steps back and leaves the storytelling to the orchestra. Brian Thomson’s equally bold design - a black-box set with a regular matrix of LED bulbs - uses eighties hues to create pixilated cartoon backdrops that fill in some of the spaces.

The result is an awesome spectacle, and one which deserves its festival setting. It leaves plenty of room for strong vocal performances, particularly from Peter Coleman-Wright as Harry and Merlyn Quaife as his wife Betty. Lorina Gore as part-time hooker and new-age beekeeper Honey B, who becomes Harry’s lover, is given more opportunity for subtlety and makes full use of it in an expressive performance.

Long plot developments, such as Harry’s children’s incestuous relationship and Betty’s infidelity are amusingly told using a big revolve. But it is the big set pieces, such as a circus-cafe scene when Harry’s car is sat on by an elephant, or his arrival in a Dantesque mental institution that really unite score, staging and performances.

And any shortcomings in theatricality of the whole are compensated for with a stunning double ending as Betty explodes into benzene hell and Harry grows his way into a Honeyed heaven.