ON STAGE The Summer 2011 newsletter of Vol.12 No.1 Bliss in Edinburgh Robert Mitchell provides an insider’s account of Opera Australia’s recent triumph at the Edinburgh Festival. buzz went around Opera Although OA’s productions now appear in 1994, and My Fair Lady visited New Australia when it was announced overseas regularly, this was only the fourth Zealand in 2009.) Athat the company had been time in more than 30 years that the Although rumours had been circulating invited to the 2010 Edinburgh International company’s artists would also travel with a for months that the tour was happening, it Arts Festival. The opera: Bliss, the hot-off-the- production. (Rigoletto and Jenufa toured New was not until the party after the 12 March press piece adapted from Peter Carey’s 1981 Zealand in 1976, Britten’s A Midsummer world première in Sydney that Jonathan novel by Brett Dean and Amanda Holden. Night’s Dream went to the Edinburgh Festival Mills, artistic director of the festival, * confirmed that, subject to signing off on the By mid-April the funding was in place Adelaide, and the QPAC Theatre, Brisbane. the star, seven of his colleagues and the lion. retained, the refurbishment by the Millburn over by the Mecca Bingo organisation. The funding, the rumours would turn into reality. (including a generous contribution from the Then the surprise: walking onto the set, Fortunately there was a fire curtain and the brothers reduced the theatre from four to seating was removed from the stalls and it The logistics (and ergo costs) of touring Victorian government, thanks to Edinburgh with the house curtain out, there in all its audience and auditorium were spared. three levels and the seating capacity from was used as a bingo hall until 1989. opera are enormous. Neil Armfield’s being a sister city to Melbourne), so once the splendour is an original 1920s theatre Coincidentally, only a week earlier, 3000 to 1900. The elaborate late Victorian When Rank Strand bought out Mecca production, although minimal in appearance, Melbourne season closes on 1 May, the huge interior. This theatre obviously has a history. Lafayette (born Sigmund Neuberger in 1872) plasterwork was replaced using the more Bingo in 1990, the theatre was put on the is far from simple. Brian Thomson’s glossy task of fitting everything into containers and But what a chequered history! The site has had been granted special permission to bury restrained neo-classical style popular in the market and acquired by the Edinburgh City black single set for the three-act Bliss consists sending it safely on its way began. In the been occupied by a theatre since 1830 when the body of his beloved dog Beauty in the 1920s, including a good deal of wood panelling, Council. The new stage, described above, of three walls enclosing an open space. But middle of the winter season at the Opera it opened its doors as the Royal Amphitheatre. local Piershill Cemetery, but on condition similar to early US cinema style as studied by was constructed and the orchestra pit made the set’s floor, which sits on top of the stage House, with the prospect of being back in It was renamed the Dunedin Hall in 1854 and that he would be buried in the same plot on the Millburns, and incorporating decorative flexible to seat between 40 and 120 players. floor, includes its own revolve (no theatre Sydney for Rigoletto rehearsals on 9 September, then became first the Alhambra Music Hall, his death. Days after the illusionist’s ashes elements that were to become associated with The stage floor having been rebuilt on has a built-in revolve that can suit all the cast set off on 27 August to the other side then Queens Hall, until it was destroyed by were laid to rest in the plot, another body early Art Deco. With its new contemporary the horizontal, the stalls floor was raked for productions), while the walls are furnished of the world for three rehearsals and two fire in 1875. Newsome’s Circus occupied the was found in the burnt-out theatre. But this look, the Empire Palace Theatre reopened to improved sightlines. Thanks to the excellent with invisible, apparently self-activating performances of Bliss. site until Edward Moss acquired it in 1892 body was wearing a ring identified as that the strains of the ‘new musical play’ Show Boat. acoustics achieved with the help of the doors, and the entire surface is studded with The Edinburgh Festival Theatre, on and commissioned prolific theatre architect given to Lafayette by the great illusionist The next 35 years saw a succession of Millburn brothers’ wood panelling, the 2916 light bulbs. Nicolson Street, is the principal venue for the Frank Matcham to build the Empire Palace Houdini. It seems Lafayette’s body double musicals, variety shows, ice shows (which auditorium was restored in its 1928 style, Despite their appearance, the light bulbs are far from ordinary: each contains three LEDs, which, like the old TV tubes, allows them to emit any colour, and each has an individual computer ‘address’ to control it. Using the lights, ‘set changes’ are made instantaneously with pixilated graphics created by Digital Media Manager Chris Twyman. Another pre- programmed computer controls the direction and speed of the revolve’s many turns. The 12 tables, more than 50 chairs and 16 hospital beds were all carefully chosen off-the-rack or purpose-built in the OA workshops, and most of the pieces were reinforced Peter Coleman-Wright as Harry Joy and The theatre’s magnificent 1900-seat auditorium. and had casters added. festival’s major opera and dance events. Lorina Gore as Honey B in Bliss. The Lafayette memorial plaque at the OP stage entrance Then there is the coup de théâtre set piece: When approaching the theatre, past the 1789 a 3.6m by 10m peat-moss-filled wedge on Robert Adam-designed University of Edinburgh Theatre, which opened in 1894, with elaborate continue in 2011) and, with the chair design copied from the wheels that glides into position while the building, the first impression is that it is an plaster work and bench seating allowing a from 1947 (the year of originals still in place in the circles. centre section of the back wall flies out (let’s inappropriate 1990s glass-fronted gap, like a capacity of up to 3000. Matcham’s credits the first Edinburgh Shops to the front of the theatre were hope the doors in it have been locked off!) missing tooth, between rows of traditional grey also include London’s Palladium and Coliseum Festival) operas and demolished so that the inadequately narrow in full view for the last scene. Sourcing the stone Scottish Georgian façades on the right theatres, among many others (the dreaded ballets. The list of artists original foyer could be transformed into the ideal peat-moss was difficult and expensive and Victorian shop/residences on the left. Wikipedia entry is very informative [see end- who performed at the ‘Johnny Walker’ foyer, housing a café and enough in the first place. Now a new headache Is it perhaps that the modern theatre has notes]). The year 1896 saw the first moving in the show had been mistakenly buried Empire during that period is impressive. bars and (proudly proclaimed) ‘the only arose: quarantine restrictions prohibited the been set back from the older line of buildings pictures shown in Scotland at the theatre, but with Beauty. Eventually the master’s ashes Archival material on display in the foyers sees staircase on a central axis of the auditorium two cubic litres from being imported into out of deference to the historic streetscape? without great success. and his dog were reunited in the one casket. George Grossmith Jnr (son of the great G&S in Britain; everyone uses the same stairs Britain. A new load had to be sourced — and On entering the stage door, the impression of On 9 May 1911 a fire destroyed the stage The legacy of the fire is that fire curtains comedian) billed to appear in Lady Mary; regardless of price of seat.’ (Och, Scottish paid for — there. a late-twentieth-century theatre is confirmed: with a tragic loss of life. Outside the OP became standard regulation in all theatres. Dame Margot Fonteyn in The Sleeping Beauty egalitarianism!) Also to be shipped to Edinburgh were the concrete block construction (painted pale grey) entrance to downstage is a granite plaque The theatre quickly reopened and, to hold (1947); Laurel and Hardy in Birds of a Feather Now managed by the Festival City Theatres costumes by Alice Babidge for the cast of 15 and wide steel staircases accessing four levels dedicated to the memory of the illusionist, back the rising tide of cinema, mounted and Roy ‘King-of-the-Cowboys’ Rogers, with Trust, in 1994, in the presence of HM Queen principals, 36 chorus and six dancers. Each of dressing rooms and administration offices. the Great Lafayette, and members of his increasingly spectacular shows. his famous horse Trigger (1954). Elizabeth, HRH the Duke of Edinburgh, on-stage character has three or more complete The Bliss set is already on stage, looking company, who died in the fire. Access to the Edinburgh’s great son, later dubbed by Several ballet notables who subsequently HRH the Duke of York and the King and outfits, including shoes and accessories. And eerily reminiscent of the last time we saw it stage had been locked for reasons now lost to Sir Winston Churchill ‘Scotland’s greatest ever spent time in Australia are prominent, Queen of Norway, the Festival Theatre opened 1980s period wigs, all in individual boxes! in the Arts Centre in Melbourne, but without history: either at Lafayette’s insistence so that ambassador’, Sir Harry Lauder, was a regular, including Vassilie Trunoff (Borovansky its doors with a performance of the English And props — glassware (plastic), cutlery and the advantage of quite as much wing space none of the crew could see how he achieved reportedly earning more per night than any Ballet) and Anne Woolliams (Australian National Ballet’s production of Sleeping napery; even gardening implements.