Look, I really, really wanted to like it. Truly. It's a huge undertaking with a massive amount of risk involved and hundreds of thousands of dollars on the line. I'm sure the acts are all top of their field, the music - avant garde, the dancing - modern yet with a nod to history (done by way of contact improvisation no doubt) and the overall theme incredibly provocotive and cutting edge.
It's just that I don't want to see one bloody bit of it.
I look around at the companies performing here and overseas and wonder how a festival AD and her board could get it so wrong? (and get away with it)
The trouble is, of course, it'll rake in a huge amount of dollars from deluded Melburnians who are racking up their culture karma points in one fell swoop (leaving the rest of the year bare - and the local productions struggling). I bet if you asked them what they thought of the festival they'd wave their hands in the air and say it was "simply wunnerful darling" like some nightmarish Jeannie Little (a tautology?)
Gross generalisations and character assassinations aside - I personally found the 2007 program well meaning but acts (new and recycled) empty and trite.
...and perhaps it's biggest crime - it's completely devoid of humour.
While Goering may have said "When I hear the word culture, I reach for my revolver." I think Groucho Marx said it best "I've had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn't it."
3 comments:
You are so hard to please Amor.
Oh come on, I fail to understand how anyone who read the full program can say such things. What about "Best in Show" which "...explores the idylls and daydreams of small town life and its rituals. Specifically, five New Zealand-based ceramicists look at Australia and their own hometowns as lost worlds of quaint traditions."
How could anyone describe small town life as expressed in the medium of ceramics as "empty and trite"? You say these things now but I can just imagine you slinking along to the show just to be snide and condescending and, despite all your cynicism, being moved to tears by a small bowl that perfectly captures what it's like to live in Clunes or Yackandandah.
I was once attacked by a bear, so in a way I understand your point of view.
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