Sorry, this is a bit of a ramble – so if you can be bothered, get a cuppa and a comfortable chair.

Sometimes I try to write a review with a positive slant – even give the show the benefit of my doubt.  But today I’m failing miserably.  Apologies up front.  No, never apologise.  Grahame Bird style.  No, not that either.  And I know that we have a new festival director and I want to avoid raising Voice’s ire about ugly personal abuse because that’s not what I intend.

Sometimes a bad entertainment experience comes from within.  Bad attitude going to a show is often rewarded accordingly.  On reflection I think an unhappy review is as much a reflection on the reviewer as it is on the show.  OK, I’ll admit some culpability here.

This was our fourth Sydney Festival in a row; 1 Magical; 2 Amazing; 3 Curate’s egg; 4 Mostly disappointing.

For me the 2010 Sydney Festival was in trouble when the program was released last November.  The First Mate and I pored over the paperwork with the usual expectant excitement – and after an hour or so we exchanged  “Oh Dear” looks.  Very little seemed interesting.  But like troupers we re-applied ourselves to the task and agreed on:

• Smoke and Mirrors in the Spiegeltent – Adult Circus/Cabaret/Vaudeville
• Toumani Diabate – West African kora player extraordinaire and friends and relations
• Circus Oz at Tumbalong Park
• Giselle at the Carriageworks – Redfern – walking distance from home
• Dirty Three and Laughing Clowns at the Enmore Theatre – also walking distance from home
• Optimism – after Candide at Sydney Opera House Drama Theatre
• The Fence –  a late booking to Urban Theatre Projects (about whom I’ve previously written at the Pig’s – challenging theatre al fresco) – this time in a constructed outdoor theatre in the old King’s School grounds in Parramatta.

The deal is that if you book five or more gigs you get a 20% discount.  But not all gigs can be booked this way and you must do a separate booking for some of the others – this is how I forgot to book the Brazilian Dance gig.  Also I was a bit festivalled out at this stage.

We gave the German Production of Hamlet a miss after a really disappointing, dull and very boring (coarse but accurate) experience with Sydney Theatre Company’s War of the Roses last year.  It was as I said at the time (another Unleashed sat-on piece) –  blood death and boredom times four.  Unrelenting 4 X 2 hour sessions over two days on a bare set stage.  Not saved by Cate Blanchett.  We were looking for relief as Australia followed the rest of the world into recession – and we got grim, grim, grim.  Pity, the reviews this year said the German Hamlet was a Festival Highlight.

So the summary reviews ?

Smoke and Mirrors – was arguably the best thing at the festival this year.  It was scary, funny, riveting dirty cabaret at its best.  The small cast – especially the MC Joel Grey character was talented beyond description – bad, bad and hilarious.  And did we love singing along to his version of the lewd Eskimo Nell – Irene Iray ?  You bet !  The acrobats were simply unbelievably good – doing impossible acts of wry daring and strength.  The bearded lady with the voice that soared like an angel was wonderful.  I was in love.  And the First Mate swore we saw her again at Yum Cha in Erina – but that’s another story – about hallucinogenic prawn toast.  Todd McKenny (you know the gay dance dude who pegged out in Rushcutter’s Bay park) tapped up a miraculous storm.  The magician was sufficiently barely competent so I was spellbound waiting to see whether he was going to screw up.  I wasn’t disappointed with some poorly concealed sleights (spelling ?) of hand.  All up – Fabulous.

But the timing of Spiegeltent and the other gigs prevented us from going to the allegedly great Indian music and show troupe in Hyde Park – ah compromises, compromises.

Toumani Diabate and his band at the lovely State Theatre  were really very good too.  He DID seem to play the same piece three times with variations – Opening solo, then again with full band and once more for luck in the closing encore, but hey – it’s a great sound and the piece goes for about 12 minutes.  Sample some of his music off the web or see if he shows up in the Nathan Rees Memorial Dance Club at the Pig’s Arms in the near future..

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Circus Oz was pretty much what Circus Oz is – one more time around.  Some hilarious stunts, challenging if not exactly death defying acrobatics, slick tumbling, a strong woman who was really extremely fit (Pins of Steel) and a midget (are we OK to say this these days or am I supposed to say “vertically challenged person” ?) – were clever, funny and quite entertaining.  If I’m damning them with feint praise, perhaps that’s fair enough.  The crew are multi-talented performers and they did a workman-like if not astonishingly novel job.

Giselle –  I was looking forward to Giselle.  Pity that we had had a huge day at work and a family disaster that same day – and we flopped in front of the TV – exhausted – completely forgetting that our tickets to Giselle were for that night.  oops !

Dirty Three and Laughing Clowns at the Enmore Theatre.  An ’80s band reprise for Bands that I missed in the 80s but who carried some cult following cachet.  The Sydney Morning Herald daily review of the Festival poured scorn on this gig.   Fair enough.  It was without a doubt the worst gig I’ve been to for a very long time.  I remember Ed Kuepper – formerly of the Saints being regarded back then as a brilliant but irascible guitarist musician composer.  The music was a wall of hard driven, monotonous, repetitive rock punctuated with some fiercely passionate saxophone work.   The Herald critic bucketed the Enmore Theatre as a really shit venue – it was monsoon hot or worse, crowded and acoustically ordinary.  He /she said that if the Enmore was the best they could do for a venue for live music in Sydney, that is the reason why live music is dying.  Amen to that.  We headed to the bar after three mutually indistinguishable songs with unintelligible lyrics.  You had to be a die-hard fan.

Relieved to go back into the sauna for the second half, we were met by a hippie  Charles Manson in stove-pipe pants with an electric violin, attempting to do kungfoo kicks and play – seemingly like a dude on lsd.  “Hey man, this song is about the 2% of the time when you fall in love that’s not all fucked up”.  Well, that’s an elegant and perceptive take on love !  No, well, at this point I have to loosen myself up and say I cannot remember a performance more crapulous than this trio.  I’m absolutely certain that they were playing the 98% fucked up bits.

The Herald panned “Optimism” saying that it was neither optimistic nor particularly funny.  I like Frank Woodley and I thought it was funny – kind of, but I was trying pretty hard to adopt a positive attitude – after all, it was my dough going down the gurgler at an alarming rate.  Alison Whyte did a convincing job, Francis Greenslade was as goonish as his name suggests and Barry Otto played Barry Otto (score: one all).

Now, to the Fence.  I have come to expect the unexpected from Urban Theatre Projects and I wasn’t let down expectation-wise.  The play explored (really more like “toyed-with”) the difficulties of a mixed race family in domestic tension.  An indigenous man.  A white woman.  Both from tough circumstances.  His family, a neighbour and for some unknown reason an obese Greek boarder,wandered around their living room and backyard, wandered on and off set.  Had a few blues, played a bit of Paul Kelly and Willie Nelson music and for me left me with the feeling of waiting for Godot, western suburbs style.  It’s not PC to bag out indigenous performance, so let’s just say that perhaps I was having another flat night by bringing along a worn out unresponsive attitude.

This year we spent roughly half of the usual budget on tickets to the festival.  It was hard to decide what was worth going to – and we went anyway out of loyalty to what had previously been much needed nourishment for the soul.  Maybe the flat program was a reflection of a lack of support from the famously broke NSW Government.  Maybe it was a reflection of a tired festival in general or the real face of the global financial meltdown.  The tickets were mostly – but not entirely more reasonably priced but the quality of events was also toned down.  I gather that some other big ticket events – $145 for some (according to the Herald) vastly under-rehearsed sea shanties on the Opera House forecourt) were true stinkers and I have to say that my days of speculating $300 the pair for tickets to see whether Marianne Faithfull can still cut the mustard with the Ballad of Lucy Jordan after ALL THESE years – are well and truly over.

Next year, I’m afraid, if the program smells like Stilton, I won’t be paying hard cash to be cheesed off.

Now, fingers crossed that the forthcoming Sydney Writers’ Festival will be another boomer.  And that the Sydney Film Festival will rise out of the ashes  of last year’s hole.  I’m hoping to feel just a tad more festive real soon now !