It’s Brisbane Festival so let’s get the party started. And there is no better way to do that than with Straight From The Strait.
The festival officially opens Friday night with Jean Paul Gaultier’s Fashion Freak show, but you need something to warm everyone up and this collaboration between Opera Queensland, Yumpla Nerkep Foundation and QPAC, in association with Brisbane Festival, is a joyful way to do that.
Just to confirm, though, this is not an opera. It is a musical party on stage with a hot band and some great tunes including a bit of reggae, which had me rocking in my seat at the Playhouse – and I can assure you that never happens. The theme song, Straight From The Strait, could be a chart topper, I reckon.
It helped that on opening night, August 27, there were a lot of Torres Strait Islanders in the audience, as this is a Torres Strait Australian story. They whistled and waved and sang along (they obviously know the words to some of the traditional language songs) and they helped create this amazing party atmosphere.
Still, the party on stage will be enough to keep everyone happy during a relatively short season. The show is only on until Saturday, August 31, so don’t delay, book today!
It’s reasonably well known that I’m not a fan of musical theatre and this is more musical theatre than opera. Opera companies take a broader-brush approach nowadays and that may not always work. In this case it does, big time. It’s so much better than those recycled musicals that keep coming to town. This one is dubbed A Torres Strait Islander Musical – and that makes all the difference.
It helps that it is a fabulous story (writer and co-librettist is Norah Bagiri) about Torres Strait Islander men who worked on building the railways across Australia’s top end during the 1960s. It starts off as a very Queensland story as they sail by lugger to Cairns and work the line in Charters Towers and Mt Isa and Rockhampton. Queensland Rail gets a lot of plugs in this show!
Then the men go to Western Australia where rail lines are needed for the mining industry. It’s in WA that on May 8, 1968, the men from the Strait created the world record for heavy-haul tracklaying. It’s an amazing true story, a Queensland story, an Australian story and it’s heartwarming, funny and full of music, both traditional and more contemporary. There’s a bit of rock’n’roll, some country, a touch of calypso, reggae and some soul. Georgia Corowa does an amazing soul number. What a voice!
It’s a story of family as much as anything and at the centre of it are two warring brothers, Boyor (Paul Isakara Williams) and Kusa (Harold Pascoe). They feud but come together when it matters to help break that world record.
Vaughan Wapau is Pinau, a character and narrator who helps tell the story in Torres Strait creole, which is largely understandable but, not to worry, there are surtitles to help.
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A standout vocally is Marcus Corowa, an accomplished singer and performer who we have seen quite a bit of in recent years. But most of the people on stage will be new faces to you and I believe some are entirely new to performing. So, there are a few wonky bits vocally and dramatically but, somehow, they just endear the production even more.
Director Nadine McDonald-Dowd has done a brilliant job bringing it all together. The smoking hot live band on stage (music director and co-librettist is Rubina Kimiia) enlivens the whole performance, which is one of the best things you will see at Brisbane Festival. The fact that it’s a story close to home makes it all the more compelling.
Straight From The Strait continues at the Playhouse, QPAC, until August 31; qpac.com.au
brisbanefestival.com.au
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