By Reviewed by Michael Shmith
Gordon Kerry and Louis Nowra
Victorian Opera, Malthouse Theatre
Until May 23
COMPOSER Gordon Kerry and librettist Louis Nowra describe Midnight Son as "An opera inspired by a true story". That story is infamous: the murky, tragic tale of Maria Korp, her suburban Don Giovanni of a husband, Joe, and his murder-intent mistress, Tania Herman. Worse cases occur in opera, but perhaps not with quite the same disturbingly still-warm immediacy.
The names may have been changed (although syllabically they are the same), a good deal of dramatic licence may have been taken, but the essential plot is unaltered. Marisa Clark, the victim of a botched murder attempt by Clara Johnson, is left for dead in the boot of a car; she never regains consciousness and is taken off life support; on the day of her funeral, Ray Clark hangs himself in his garage.
Byron Watson and Antoinette Halloran in the Victorian Opera's Midnight Son.
That much, we know. What no one knows, and can only attempt to fathom since two of the three protagonists are dead and one in prison, is what motivated Ray's moral duplicity, why Marisa was so desperate to keep her two-timing husband, and what drove Clara to do what she did. As a dramatic device, this is fairly slender; yet, to their credit, Kerry and Nowra have fashioned an episodic work in 12 scenes whose brevity (one act, 90 minutes) brings the main characters vividly and emotionally to the fore. A couple of cuts, however, wouldn't hurt.
Interestingly, the plot runs in reverse, from Ray's suicide through trouble and strife and halcyon days, back to his first meeting with Marisa. As Wolcott Gibbs wrote of Time magazine's convoluted style, "Backward ran sentences until reeled the mind … Where it all will end, knows God!" But here, with Nicki Wendt's razor-sharp direction and Andrew Bellchambers' glossy black-tiled set (not every opera has a rolling garage door as its deus ex machina), the inversion works intriguingly, as layer on layer of these disparate lives is simultaneously peeled away and restored. Esther Marie Hayes' costumes and Nigel Levings' lighting were spot-on.
Kerry's score, dexterously played by a nine-member ensemble from Orchestra Victoria expertly conducted by Ollivier-Philippe Cuneo, is more thriller-like than operatic: full of spiky tensions, interspersed with some fine lyrical writing. Nowra's taut libretto, replete with clever rhymes and some R-certificate language, brings purpose and clarity.
On opening night, Byron Watson was agile in voice and manner as Ray; Antoinette Halloran was a vulnerable and affecting Marisa. But Dimity Shepherd's Clara, a character of real conflict, was the most fascinating and memorable performance. Roxane Hislop and Jonathan Bode worked hard in various on and offstage roles.
All up, Midnight Son is an ambitious work that deserves to be seen. I feel less confident, even uneasy, about its durability. Is the piece sufficient to stand on its own, regardless of its historic provenance, or is it too limited to time and place to be anything other than perishable?